Guyster Archives · Terry Danuser

Rose Hills

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 16:13:29 +0000

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The Rings

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 15:42:57 +0000

I took off the ring that Billy and I wore since he proposed to me in our hotel room in Montreal when we went to the Black and Blue Party in 1997. They were a simple pair of unpolished silver bands. I’d been wearing Billy’s, plus another one he also wore that he found and really liked on the Venice boardwalk. Billy is still wearing mine.

I took them off shortly after Labor Day of last year, placing them on our red dresser, next to the card Billy made with a poem he wrote etched into the heavy bronze stock. He constructed a pocket that held the rings, and on bended knee with tears in his eyes he read me his poem and slipped that ring onto my third finger left hand.

I’d worn them just shy of twenty years. I cried when Billy first gave me mine in Montreal and then again when his was returned at the end of January of 2002 from the Coroner’s office, I cried even harder, sobbing uncontrollably as the woman with a smirk behind bulletproof glass dropped it through the slot. I put it on immediately, doubling over. Dixie, Billy’s oldest sis, was with me. I signed whatever I needed to sign. We left.

Twenty years today.

I’ve lived an entire other life, really, one completely unexpected. I reinvented my career. I’ve traveled the world. I lived in Washington DC for two years and I lived in NYC for over five. I bought three houses, one in Saint Elmo right down the street from Billy’s high school. I’ve had three dogs since I lost our Bob Slobbers when I lived in DC, still got one left.

The puzzle that’s tangled my thoughts so often over the past two decades is thinking of all the things Billy missed. He never saw an iPod let alone an iPhone, never had a Facebook account, didn’t get to love those three dogs. Or live in DC or NYC. Or dance again.

It’s possible, even probable, he would’ve met someone else, a man who wanted children. And that was one of Billy’s biggest dreams. He loved kids and having them was never going to happen with me. Billy’s goals were modest, yet there were those dreams he’d tell me in a halting whisper, almost afraid to say them out loud.

Through the past twenty years, when people spied the rings on my finger and asked me if I was married, I deflected the question quickly by saying it was a long story for another day. It always felt like I just kicked Billy’s can down the road but telling the story behind the rings I wore would be long and it would end in tears. So, I just punted.

I met someone in Paris this past September, someone for whom I care deeply, and every time he’d hold my left hand and stumble on the rings, I felt dishonest or crippled maybe. And they started to weigh like lead. I took them off. The rings.

It was time. Twenty years.

These silver bands go on and on,

Just like our love.

We will see thru the same eyes,

We will see time pass the same way.

Clouds float into eternity,

We are one of those clouds.

You are my love –

Always, Bildoe

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The Couch

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 00:45:54 +0000

The office of our friend Jimmey was in a writer’s bungalow in the back of the Fox lot, tucked away beyond the prop and set barns, far past the lot’s famed New York street. Pee Wee was the previous occupant during his Playhouse years. He left behind a long sofa, each cushion a different Sixties pastel with black piping—turquiose next to salmon up against butter yellow—super poppy and like its show, the piece was childlike. Billy and I loved it, so much so that we begged Jimmey to sell it to us and he did when his office was outfitted with new furniture.

I don’t remember exactly how we got it to our Venice bungalow with its separated upstairs loft in the backyard, but that’s where it landed and for years, we lounged and played and cuddled on that thing before I found Billy dead on it at 8:45am on January 21^st, 2002. It was MLK Day that year.

After his funeral, Billy’s family went back to the loft so they could figure out what they wanted, pieces of Billy, the things he loved, stuff that they would cherish and remind them of him. Chris chose his substantial vinyl collection. Matt took the electronics. Amie, his niece, wanted the couch, and had it moved to Saint Elmo, Illinois, the tiny town where Billy grew up.

I’m not sure what happened to it after it left the loft, but I know I was glad to never see that fucking couch again.

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Thirty years, with and without

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 21:04:16 +0000

Thirty years ago today, I met Bill Ledbetter at a “party,” one where we connected inside my first five minutes of being there. After I left, I couldn’t quite shake how much I enjoyed meeting him, unusual for someone whose motto was always “in bed by midnight, home by three.”

The next day I called him. I was a little nervous. I hadn’t really ever made a date before. “Would you want to go to dinner tonight?”“Sure!”Relieved at his instant response, we set it up to meet at Baja Cantina, a Mexican place near the boat in the Marina that I was living on.

There was really no turning back after that second night we spent together. It was nine-and-a-half of crazy roller coaster years before he was gone. In an instant, without warning.

And I’m a better man for knowing and loving Bill Ledbetter

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Ludlow

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:49:24 +0000

They’ve called Ludlow a ghost town ever since Interstate-40 came along and destroyed its once-needed Route 66 businesses. Sitting in the middle of the Mojave desert, sped past by most except those riding on the fumes of an empty tank, the only thing in Ludlow besides the abandoned diner are a gas station––a sign warns that the next fuel is eighty miles up the road––and the Ludlow Motel with its Vacancy sign always lit. In our house, though, the very mention of the name of that spit of a town meant, It’s time to shut the hell up and accept the fact that I love you, no matter how mad you or I are right now.

It was our safe word.

I spent Thanksgiving in Saint Elmo, Illinois, Billy’s hometown, where the business district is two blocks long, yet it’d make Ludlow look like a bustling metropolis, but once you get outside the town’s limits, there’s nothing but winter cornfields and an endless sky.

I drove to Mattoon, up north a bit, the next day to get my annual tattoo, a ritual that celebrates our anniversary. This year it was our sixteenth and while that number doesn’t have a particular meaning, I’d already designed what I wanted in my head.

His oldest sister Dixie asked me why I just got that name, Ludlow, tattooed on the back of my calf––I had it done in a classic sailor font with an orange fill. That night, we were at dinner with every member of Billy’s family except for that sister Deb, the one no one likes (and I guess she feels the same way about them), and when Dixie posed the question, the table silenced, even little Jack, just thirteen days old, but old enough to know to hold his tongue when a good story was brewing.

“Well, when Billy drove out here to fix up Grandpa Hopper’s house…” I saw every eye on me, except for Kaeden and Kael, too young to know where they even were, and I felt like some exotic creature from that crazy big city out west, but I just continued.

Billy had called me in a panic, his little Toyota truck hadn’t made it more than two hundred miles away from home before it broke down. He was stuck at the gas station off the Ludlow ramp and the mechanic there told him all he needed was a hose. He’d already called an Auto Zone near our house and asked if I could drive it out to him.

Without thinking twice, I jumped in the car, bought the hose for five bucks, and got on the road for a nice long drive. It was about a half hour into the trip that the temperature gauge shot into the red––the only thing to do was turn on the heat so the engine wouldn’t burn up.

To make the story more exciting, and accurate, I emphasized to the family that it was a hundred degrees out, which made it cooler outside than inside the car, and I was sweating. Oh, and all four tires were as bald as the crown of my head.

I made it all the way to Ludlow, somehow, and found a dusty roadside motel and a gas station with one guy there who had no access to auto parts. Billy was sitting in his motel room with the door open waiting for me. When he saw me, he beamed and hugged me and said he could never thank me enough.

“Oh, yes, Guyster, there is a way you can thank me,” And there was. I thought of it while sweating over the past four hours.

Almost every bad fight we had, Billy would retreat into the corner of You don’t love me, you don’t care about me… and I would then have to find ways of reassuring him that he was, in fact, loved.

“OK, from now on, every time you think I don’t love you, I will say one word and one word only. Ludlow. The only reason I’m here, Bill Ledbetter, is because of love. Pure love. Love love love. Love drove that fucking car and love is going to drive it back. So. Ludlow. Got it?”

He nodded in agreement, went out to borrow tools from the attendant and fixed his truck himself. We went back into his motel room. It was dark and cool. We laid there in silence and then started to fool around. It was great being a fleabag motel room and we made the most of it. We fell asleep in each other’s arms. We woke up around nine at night, the sun had said goodbye, and it cooled off outside. I didn’t want to drive back the next day in the heat, so I kissed him, said “Ludlow” as a reminder, and left.

Ludlow became shorthand for love in our home. Ludlow is one of the many words engraved on his memorial bench that sits under the tree near his headstone. Ludlow.

WRITTEN 02/23/2009

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The Fob

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 17:08:42 +0000

I went to my first estate sale on Saturday, and I discovered they’re sad; someone’s life with dangling white price tags. In this modest Glendale house lived an elderly woman, a fire-and-brimstone Baptist from what I saw on her bookshelf, who’d been moved recently to assisted care.

I bought one of those fussy old Art Deco vanities with the over-sized mirror and Bakelite pulls, a place where perfume bottles once held court to the doilies. Also purchased was a 1932 set of encyclopedias, handsome and leathery. Putting my negotiation and bullshit skills in action (I handed one of the guys running the show my business card and told him that estate sales might make a fascinating show, which they totally wouldn’t, but I’ll try anything for a good deal), I got them both for less than half price.

Carrying the vanity, I sweated my way out of the house now crammed with people including four hefty ones who were dressed for the Renaissance Faire, and I lost my necklace, something as permanent on me for the past four years as the tattoo on my chest. It was just as I sidled in the vanity’s matching bench into the back of the Explorer that I noticed it gone. It could’ve been anywhere and anyone might have nabbed it.

I panicked. Up until Billy died, the chain hung from our medicine cabinet, a daily reminder that no one in our little family was lost.

The necklace is compass fob that I bought Billy as a souvenir while I was in London with a good friend of ours who was co-starring in Hackers. On the flight over, Alberta Watson and I watched The Client while lounging in our little slippers given to travelers in first class. In one key scene, Susan Sarandon leans down to her little co-star and gives him a compass on a chain. She tells him that if he’s ever lost, just hold that compass tight and it would bring him right back to her.

I knew immediately what I wanted to find in London.

The problem was that I didn’t know the word “fob,” so I roamed from store to store trying to explain in my best pantomime that I wanted a little compass on a chain. I received a lot of those looks that said I was a pitiful American and they’re lucky an ocean separates us.

Finally, I wandered into an antique mall near Covenant Square where I found two: a solid gold one I couldn’t afford and the other a small gold plated fob shaped like a ship’s captain’s wheel. I bought the latter because I liked the connection between it and Billy’s service in the Navy, and I also had enough in my pocket to actually make the purchase.

When Billy opened the box, he gave me a you-know-I-don’t-wear-necklaces look, and I said, “Now if you’re ever lost, you can always find your way home.” He smiled broadly, gave me a peck on the lips before I helped him clasp it in place. After about two weeks, it found its home dangling from the corner of the medicine cabinet.

I walked from my car to the house and back over the lawn, looking for any glint in the sun, any sign of the necklace. I was wild-eyed. One more thing lost forever. One more piece chipped away. How am I going to find my way home without it? The man to whom I gave my card saw me combing through the grass on all fours when he came out to see if he could help.

“I lost my necklace.” My hand went to my throat reflexively and my throat choked out the words. I avoided his eyes. He started to study the spot where I was kneeling, and said he’d go look in the house. He came back empty handed as I was making my tenth or thirtieth navigation of the lawn.

“I promise I won‘t do this all day.” My pained smile shot at him, which made his feet shift a little. I was about to completely lose my balance when I spotted it, lying there lazily, just as I’d about given up all hope of seeing it again. “Oh God.” I grabbed it and held it to my chest, my eyes welling over their brim.

“I’m glad you found it. I can see how much it means to you.”

“Means the world.” I thanked him for his help and quickly climbed into my car. I slid the chain over my head around my neck and held that compass tight, crying at its near-loss.

“I found it, baby. Now I’ll be able to find you. You’re my Guyster and I love you.” That’s exactly what I said in full voice with the windows rolled up in front of a modest house in Glendale where an elderly woman once lived.

WRITTEN 05/09/2006

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Happy 44th, Bildoe!

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 13:58:52 +0000

Billy would’ve turned forty-four today.

I’d have booked a dinner for us at a restaurant that he’d think was too expensive, and I’d cajole him into ordering the New York strip despite his protests that it cost too much. Before dinner, though, back home in our living room, I’d have already arranged a row of presents that would’ve included a new cell phone, and Sirius for his car because he would’ve been whining about not having one since Mickey gave me mine at Christmas. There’d also be that really cute shirt he pointed out at American Rag, as well as some new socks and underwear, and the annual box of dark chocolate-covered raisins from the candy shop near my office, and then he’d get to take his Birthday Walk.

In the past four and a half years since he’d’ve gotten out of the hospital and regained his strength, we would’ve been a non-smoking house. Losing Bob would’ve crushed him, and he probably wouldn’t have picked Steven as our next dog, but they’d still be thick as thieves. Man, he would’ve loved the DC experience, though, and bawled when we had to move from our Venice home but he’d have already set up his workshop in the new one, tinkering around every inch of the new house, and this past weekend, he would’ve cuddled our new find, Eddie.

We would’ve had a thousand fights, some of them ending with us naked and exhausted after exchanged apologies. We may have even separated for a little while, but we’d have come back together. We always did.

Writing about Billy in the past tense seems like a lie to me, because he is present every single moment of every single day. That’s why the words burned into my arm mean so much to me, even more than they meant when I first read Billy’s prophetic poem in Montreal in the card he crafted for his marriage proposal to me.

We will see
thru the same eyes
We will see time
pass the same way.
Clouds float into
eternity. We are
one of those clouds.
You are my love –
always.
Bildoe

Written August 2, 2006

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Guyster birthday

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 01:11:18 +0000

Every time he protests, “It¹s not the same as it used to be,”

I know exactly what he means. When we lived here before, there were the great churches of dance–Twilo, The Tunnel, Roxy–shirtless nights spent in sweat and lights and the relentless thump of Junior Vasquez. And nothing else mattered. When we moved back five months ago, he knew those clubs were long gone. Hell, the whole notion of bars seems to have vanished, giving way to apps that take the place of a cold beer in dim lights, but I guess being here makes him miss those places that much more.

He’d be fifty-three today. Would we still have gone to those dance clubs so he could drink too much beer and show a gathering crowd how moving to music should really be done? Probably not, but I¹d like to think I would¹ve found someplace to surprise him, asking the DJ to play Sunscreem, watching him get lost in the sound, twirl in perfect rhythm, his heart free and happy.

Would we still be together after all of these years? I don¹t know, but

if we weren¹t, I know I¹d call him today and wish him the best

birthday ever, if I could, and call him my Guyster.

“It¹s not the same as it used to be!” Indeed, Billy, it¹s not.

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Bill Ledbetter pics

Fri, 21 May 2021 17:19:05 +0000

That laugh…

Billy, Dom and Anthony

Squint

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Photo bomb

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 05:41:22 +0000

Before the term “photobomb” was coined, Billy and I were invited to a post-Grammy party at the Four Seasons Restaurant in NYC. We lived there then–me at APA and Billy at Goldman-Sachs–on the 33rd floor in an apartment building with an unobstructed view of the World Trade Center.

The place was packed, we were drunk, and I spotted Patti LaBelle and Meatloaf coming toward this narrow passageway between two party rooms. Photographers converged.

“Billy, go get in the shot!” Without a second’s hesitation, he positioned himself well and here is the prize of that moment.

Happy birthday, Guyster. You’ll always be 39, salt will always threaten your pepper, and your birthday cake’s candles will forever burn.

Billy bomb

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