EVERYONE WANTS A PIECE OF BRIAN'S ASH part 3 ENDING

     When my mother, Priscilla, called to comfort me on the morning of the memorial, I felt it important to tell my mother how much Brian liked her. Since most other people who know her think she's a real nut-job, the fact that Brian actually liked my mother and enjoyed spending time with her was not to be taken for granted. Out of all the things that astounded me about Brian Murphy, his enjoyment of my mother astounded me most.
    " I liked him too," she said.
    " Ma, when I say 'Brian liked you' I mean he really liked you. I want you to realize that, " I said, trying to make her understand what I actually meant without saying it. "He got what you're about. He thought it was great how you traveled around the world and dressed like each country. He thought some of your outfits were genius. And he loved the nerve you have. He always said you had a lot of balls. That was what he loved about you most.  One of his favorite stories to tell everyone was about the night when the three of us ate at that Vietnamese restaurant and Brian convinced you to steal the huge bottle of Extra Spicy Hot Sauce off the table and stick it in your pocketbook for him." 
  " Oh great. How many people did he tell? I don't want all your friends in San Francisco thinking I steal things. I would have never done it if he wasn't your boyfriend. I've never stolen anything else in my entire life." 
   " Ma, you've stolen towels from every hotel on the planet."
    " Towels are souvenirs. They don't count."
    " Ma. That's not the point.The point is that he loved you for that Hot Sauce."
    " Well he better not be telling everyone in Heaven that I stole it. They won't let me in. "
    "Ma, again, that's not the point. And anyway, you don't have to worry, " I laughed. " Jews don't have Heaven so you can't get in anyway."
    " Well if you're going to be so nit picky, Brian can't get in either. Tattoos aren't allowed in Heaven," she pointed out.
    " Ma, you're mixing up everything. Jews with tattoos aren't allowed to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. It's got nothing to do with Heaven."
    "How do they expect anybody to keep track of so many rules?"she said in defense of herself, flustered whenever she was asked to think too much. "Hopefully all the rabbis are wrong and you, me and Brian will all end up in Heaven together."    
    I couldn't help laughing when my mother said Brian was in Heaven. " Ma, Brian wouldn't be caught dead in Heaven. If there is one, I can promise he's not there," I laughed again with certainty. " If he's anywhere, he's in Hell right now, dancing with Donna Summer." (the memorial happened to be on the same weekend Donna Summer died, who I never forgave for her double-crossing Born-Again babble against gays at the start of the AIDS crisis).
      " Gary, what's wrong with you, why are you laughing? What kind of a thing is that to say?" she asked me, shocked.
       I reflected for a moment on how insulting my statement actually was, and apologized. " Ma, you're absolutely right, how could I say that. Brian would never dance with that Born-Again Bitch."

                    
                                                    *

    
        One of the rules about Brian's memorial, at least in my mind, was that the word 'Heaven' only be used as a punchline. Another rule was that the memorial not take place where people expect a memorial to take place. Holy ground was definitely out of the question. The only references to religion would be mocking ones.
     Back in the Club Jesus days when Brian or fellow performers were on stage, there was almost always someone doing something on a cross or doing something even worse with a crucifix.

       Brian's favorite type of cross to be strapped onto was the Benedictine model with it's equal sides that could be turned into an 'X', which was better for napping. 

A few scenes of the weekly blasphemy 

performed by Brian and the troupe. 

Original posters from Retarded Whore Productions.
  Brian had 'Retarded Whore' tattood on himself
because he didn't want to carry business cards.

       I wanted the memorial to be in a place that smacked of irony or irreverence. It also had to have enough for all the 'mournebraters' who were coming to mourn and celebrate Brian's life. Being outdoors surrounded by nature was not a high priority; as far as I was concerned, it would be a last resort. Same went for being near the ocean. A eulogy on a pristine beach would be too 'precious', as Brian called things that were too pretty and perfect. To make it acceptable, there would have to be a shipwreck or a carcass of a huge beached whale nearby. 

    When I picture Brian I don't see him outdoors; in my mind he's indoors with music on. So when I pictured the memorial, it was at a place indoors with a sound system. If there wasn't music playing in the background, it wasn't Brian. At home, music played when he was talking on the phone, eating, reading, having sex,  fighting, and sleeping. Even when he was dead the music was on. Hours after his heart attack, Dark Trance was still playing on his computer along with porn that apparently was so good it killed him.

    Another one of my rules for Brian's memorial was that if there is going to be live entertainment, it would have to be tragic. No beautiful or glamorous drag queens would be allowed to perform. Brian only enjoyed the haggard or insane ones. 

   His favorite tragic drag bar was Aunt Charlie's in the Tenderloin. Aunt Charlie's is to old drag queens what Miami is to old Jews, except that the drag queens keep working. Brian was the best audience for a dried-up drag show, or D.U.D.S. The worse the performance, the more genius he thought it was. The more things that went wrong, the more he clapped. Only kids and dogs made Brian smile more. 

   Unfortunately, my personal vision of having the drag queens from Aunt Charlie's rolled onto the stage in wheelchairs after being lowered down on a mechanical lift of a rented handicap van was a little too complicated to actually make happen. However, a group of Brian's mournebators did manage to go to a drag-show the night of the memorial and saw a drag queen 'cake' herself in the face with a entire yellow-frosted white cake from Safeway Bakery half-way through her rendition of MacArthur Park

                                                     * 
  
     I knew we had found the right place as soon as Paul King told me The Stud was available. Even the name was perfectly wrong for a memorial. It so happened that Brian had done many shows on the stage of The Stud back in his performance days, and he personally pierced the navel of The Stud's owner, Michael ( Michael was the only gay man I ever met who was a belly dancer and a top, making him a true oxymoron). I remembered how sexy Michael was back when Brian introduced me to him when Brian and I first started dating, and how I assumed he and Brian had played around in the past.
     When I called to thank Michael for offering the club for the memorial, I wanted to ask him if Brian made him wear his veils when they fucked, but I decided not to press my luck. He was being incredibly generous with his offer, and the last thing I wanted to do was insult him. His enduring fondness for Brian was immediately obvious, even though he hadn't seen him in a long time, as was the case for so many other people who hadn't seen or even spoken with Brian in years.  
    I thanked Michael again before we hung up, not even realizing he was letting us have  The Stud for free, proving once again how much Brian was loved. The Murphy allure was still potent from beyond the grave. When conjured up, even the memory of it was enough to stir people.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

The flier for the memorial at The Stud was designed by
 Brian's dear friend Christy Schaefer. The image she chose 
is fearless and shocking and joyful all at the same time, 
the perfect embodiment of Brian Murphy. The last thing 
we wanted to do was 'whitewash' Brian and show an image 
 of him that was more tasteful and antiseptic.                                               

                                                         *

BRIAN &   BACON

                                     

     One of Brian's closest girlfriends,Taj Waggarman, reminded everyone that any tribute to Brian also had to include a tribute to bacon. To Brian, as far as things edible were concerned, nothing was better than bacon. He called bacon the Sixth Food Group. He also considered it to be  an all-purpose spice, good for any meal of the day. But bacon was more than just a food to him. Bacon was a state of mind. Bacon was a lifestyle. 

BACON SHRINE
Set up at Steak's house during the mini-memorial she had for Brian.

     Part of bacon's special appeal to Brian was that it comes in a raw slab and peels off in strips like scabs. When it was frozen, he could use it as a weapon or a shield, and the package it comes in always fit between things no matter how filled the freezer was. Serving bacon for dinner is trashy and wrong, so that's what Brian often did. It is dangerous to eat and even more dangerous to prepare but it didn't scare him. He liked how bacon fought back with loud sizzling crackles and shots of grease aimed at his face. Smelling it cook during its short fight was almost as good as tasting it; no other smell promised Brian as much temporary happiness. And when well-done bacon cools down it becomes friendly and playful, and he could pick it up and point it and use as a prop. Best of all, it could be shared with Bronski, Mack and Felon.  
    But the real reason why Brian had a love affair with bacon was not only for everything  bacon was, it was also for the one thing well-done bacon wasn't ---soggy. Nothing in the world grossed out Brian more than soggy food. The worst  was anything with soggy bread in it. Yes, Brian Murphy, the man who Taj says would stick his tongue into anything, the man who she personally watched eat grilled bugs, worms, grub, the bloodiest sausage, horse meat,rattle snake, monkey brains, bull balls, chicken feet, shrimp eyes, and the slimiest oysters,   was the same man who would vomit if French Toast was too wet. 
    Brian was always on guard against potential sogginess. That's why he loved crispy, crunchy things. Bacon was perfectly cooked only if it could pass both the 'crunch test', which determined if a sound occurred when bitten, and the 'tepee test', which determined if three strips of bacon were crispy enough to support each other in the shape of a tepee. I think it can be said with certainty that  
sogginess of some sort would have eventually killed him if his heart had not.

Taj and Brian. Taj told me Brian used Bacon-Bits to slowly lure both she and Steak Haus away from vegetarianism back into the world of meat,  specifically, bacon.

    Taj had the genius idea of trying to get the memorial catered by The Bacon-Bacon Truck, which was driven around San Francisco by, who else but, The Bacon Man. Brian would have surely agreed that a truck selling bacon is wrong enough to be the perfect caterer. ( though the word 'catered' was on his creepy word list along with 'beverage,' 'moist', ' flight attendant' and 'pattie').

    The Bacon-Bacon Truck could park at the sidewalk in front of The Stud, and everyone could take turns going outside to eat. Consumption would be mandatory, even for vegetarians, Kosher Jews, and anyone who was  a member of PETA.
    It turned out that The Bacon Man was more popular than you would think. The demand for mobil bacon must be on the rise. Arranging for The Bacon- Bacon Truck to make an appearance on a busy weekend afternoon in May turned out to be as impossible as arranging a wheelchair van full of drag queens.
     The memorial would have to survive without drag queens or bacon, which most memorials somehow do survive without. Luckily it was't printed on the memorial flier, because there is nothing more disappointing to people than being promised drag queens and bacon and getting neither. 

BRIAN'S BACON WALLET

 Just by coincidence, my 

'little brother' Zel

dropped by and asked 

what I was writing.

When I told him, he casually 

said that he had 

Brian's bacon wallet on him.

My jaw dropped when he

 pulled it out of his back pocket.

 I had forgotten it

even existed and that

 I had let Zel have it, 

which he totally deserved

after all his help and his love

for Brian. Felon was just

 as excited about it as I was,

 and couldn't keep his eyes

off of it. 

                                            



    


                                               ***

     By the time Brian had graduated SFSU's Teaching Credentials Program, his enlarged heart and subsequent pulmonary hypertension was already forcing him  to sit and catch his breath when he climbed stairs or even walked up an inclined sidewalk. He hated being so out of breath. He told me it made him feel like an old man, and that it felt like he was drowning. This was the first time I ever saw Brian scared of something physical. He realized that there was no way he could engage with the school kids like he did a few years earlier, back when the teaching program started. Even the commute could be too much for his lungs, depending on where the school was and how far away the closest bus or train stopped.
     The fact that he was getting high everyday didn't seem to be a determining factor to Brian whether he should even be a classroom teacher or not. As far as he was concerned, he already proved he could be high all through the teaching program and still graduate near the top of his class. Brian, I have to say, was the most unapologetic and unashamed drug user I have ever known. He could be self-righteous about it, even indignant. 
          " Would everyone rather I start lying about it again? " he would ask me.
          " No please, I couldn't deal with the return of Sir Lie-A-Lot. Anything but that," I begged him with an exaggerated look of fear. I gave him that name during the height of his 'Lying Phase'. Brian excelled in anything he set out to do, which unfortunately in this case, helped him to be a really dedicated liar. He actual had the gaul to go up infront of an AA meeting packed with his friends while he was high and take his 90-day chip, which people are handed if they were able to stay sober for three months.
      In his defense, Brian knew if he didn't lie he would lose all his sober friends; not their love, which was unsinkable, but their support and their company. It boiled down to his sober friends feeling they had no choice and Brian feeling that he shouldn't have to make a choice. For most people who were trying to stay sober, Brian was too alluring and persuasive to be around. Taj wrote that when he constructed a home-made gravity-bong just to tempt her into smoking pot again, 'she could practically see the horns surfacing above his forehead, that devilish glint on his silver capped tooth.'
     His concerns over how easily he was losing his breath stopped him from starting his teaching career before his drug use had a chance to ruin it. He said he could have easily managed being a teacher and being high, and he saw no intrinsic conflict with the two. I'm not sure how Brian truly felt deep down about never being able to work as a teacher. Maybe just proving he could become a credentialed teacher was all he really needed in the end. There must have been a part of him that was frightened, or at least a little nervous, about bringing the drug world and the teaching world close together. I sometimes wonder if he might have been at least partly relieved to have had his health issues as an excuse, so he would never have to find out what happens when planets too close to each other collide.
     He still wanted to help kids learn, so he started collecting children's books. Like everything else he collected, he went overboard, and amassed a collection of them that filled six huge plastic bins in his storage unit. His plan was to donate all of it to an elementary school that was dog-friendly and would allow him to come and read the books out loud to students.
    Brian never passed-by a bookstore without taking a look at the children's section. His intentions were admirable, which made questioning the amount of money he was spending on books harder for me to do than it was to question his rhino and orb purchases. He was suffering from what I call  'Shopping-Spree Syndrome', or S.S.S., a condition most commonly found amongst drug dealers, spread through fingertip contact when exchanging large amounts of $20 bills. Brian apparently had a severely protracted case of it, which bothered me more than it bothered him. I had to be the more adult, rational, and even sometimes conservative voice that he needed to hear, which must be shocking to most people who know me. Through the years, my relationship with Brian has been combinations of Brother-Father-Boyfriend-Friend, or B.F.B.F. He was easily annoyed when I commented on the matter of money, so I tried to approach it from different angles. We joked about his self-prophecy of dieing at the same age his mother died so often that I thought nothing of trying to use it to make a point about his excessive purchases. Little did I know it would end up to be the most ironic conversation I ever had. 
   "Bri, now that you're 41, doesn't that mean you should stop shopping? You have to be dead before you turn 42, and that's in less than two months,  so it's ridiculous to buy anything else. " 
    " But it would be ridiculous not to do the thing I love to do if there's only two months left, " he said, using reverse logic that always worked better against my more linear logic, smiling coyly from his desk chair. 
     " But you're spending money like you really are going to die before 42. That's the ridiculous part. You're going to turn 42 and then what? Once 41 is over, the spell is broken, the curse is done. You don't have to spend money like a person who thinks he going to die." 
      " Then I'll have to spend money like a person who's going to live, which might be even more money than I've spent thinking I was going to die. I don't even know how it feels to think I'm not going to die before 42. I might be economizing right now. Imagine that? Maybe the real me hasn't even come out until I turn 42."
        I shook my head at him but couldn't help smiling as I walked over to his desk. " You're a stubborn smartimanties with a bottomless pit of responses, Brian Murphy."                      
          "'Is bottomless pit' a compliment?" he looked up at me with a cocked head and asked.
       I cocked my head too and looked in his eyes. " I think I meant it as one. I don't know. I'll get back to you on that. If I said your asshole is a bottomless pit , that . . . "  I pointed my finger in the air with flair, "would be a different story."  I paused for a moment. "But then again, coming from me, that could be a compliment too," I shrugged my shoulders, still looking down at him. 
      " Why I do declare, Mr. Glasman. That is the plum nicest thing a gentleman has ever said about my hind quarters, " he said in a Southern drawl, flapping his black eyelashes that were as thick as little  batwings. 
      I looked down at the desk he was sitting in front of and picked up three children's books that he had just bought, and asked him with a more serious tone, " There's no way to stop you from buying more of these, no matter how many you already have in storage, is there?"
     "Probably not," he said without any of the Scarlett O'Hara drawl or much apology.  
     " Bri, why is it almost impossible for anyone to ever get you to change your mind?" I asked him very sincerely.
    " Because it's almost impossible for even me to get myself to change my mind," he answered with equal sincerity. "Once it gets released up there,"  he said, his eyes rolling upward to point at his skull,  "I can't even reach it sometimes."
   I stepped away from him and for a few moments looked around the room at the amazing display of orbs, then turned back to him. "Then make me a deal.  Or make it with yourself. I'm not saying don't ever buy another one, just first donate all the children's books you have. We'll rent a Zip-truck and bring all the bins to the school you choose. I'll do all the carrying so you don't have to worry about your breathing. How does that sound? You've got a ton of them already. It's time, Bri. Please promise me," I looked at him, hoping for some enthusiasm. 
     "Don't worry. I'm planning it all out." 
     "  You have to give me more than that. I need some kind of promise about something." 
     He turned away on his swivel chair with his back to me. 
   " Bri, come on. say something. Promise you'll donate the books next week. Or in two weeks. Make some kind of spending promise. Or just promise you'll turn 42. Come on, Bri! Just promise me anything," I finally begged.
   Brian spun back in his chair to face me with his rubber Buck-toothed 'Jethro' dentures that he loved to wear." I promise to floss more!" was what he hee-hawed in his best Hillbilly.  
        
           He couldn't bring himself to give any bigger promise than that.

            Less than a week later, Brian was gone.

The notion that he had to die before turning 42 to match his mother must have been one of the notions Brian spoke of that grew wings and flew up far into his mind where even he couldn't reach to change it. He believed it for so long that his body must have come to believe it too.
                                                  
                                        *       *       *



      The bins of children's books came to represent so much more after Brian died. They had within them what was right about Brian and what was wrong.  If I just looked at the bins stacked high on one another without touching them, I saw his love for children, his love for learning, his passion for collecting, his hope, his imagination, generosity, and all his efforts. When I tried to move them, I could feel in the heavy bulkiness, Brian's excesses, his wastefulness, sense of entitlement, and above all, his stubbornness. And there was something else they were revealing, something I felt directed at me. It was the faith and trust Brian had in me to guard and respect and cherish his possessions and his memory and our great love. He knew he could count on me  to get the books where they belonged, and do the same with everything else.  
    Zel, my 'adopted' little brother who looked up to Brian and was very distraught over the death, and Kevin, the friend who found the 'Crack Jack' prize in part 1 of this series, helped at the end by clearing out and cleaning up the unit. At the end, it was empty except for the bins of children's books. I wanted to save them for last to show their importance and significance in the whole process of paying tribute to Brian. They would be the marker that would help ceremoniously close this phase of the tribute. 
   Brian's stipulations where the children's books should be donated to were: 
1. The school be dog-friendly. 
2. The school allow me to come and read the books out loud to students. 
     Let me tell you something about stipulation #2. Being a stutterer, the act of reading out loud to elementary school children is on my Wish List right below swimming in a tank of deadly stingrays. I was not going to be Brian's Stuttering Stand-In. Even my tribute to him has it's limit. It was enough that I was going to have to carry these back-breaking bins to where they would end up. 
     Anyone who has lifted a box filled with books has experienced the unexpected heaviness of it. Only bricks and dead bodies make boxes heavier. And children's books are not lighter than adult books, if you were wondering. The bins were each the size of two boxes, doubling the weight. Moving them was definitely the hardest physical part of giving Brian his final send-off.
   I almost crushed a foot or a hand a half dozen times as I tried to steer the dolly like a derailed freight train through the maze of narrow hallways in the storage facility. I cursed Brian every time I got wedged in between the dolly and a wall. "Very funny Bri, isn't it!" I said with my hands on my hips out loud to nobody. I was imagining him watching me as he laughed hysterically through his 'Jethro' hillbilly teeth.       
   Then my friend Don and I packed the bins into his SUV, and when we got to his house, he helped me lug all the bins up his staircase. His ex-husband Doug is a elementary school teacher at a public school right in the heart of The Castro, which was a perfect home for the books. Brian liked Don and Doug, and Doug was both thrilled to get them and astounded at the amount of books Brian was able to collect. I think Brian would be very pleased with where the children's books ended up, but not as pleased as I am knowing that I will never have to read any of them out loud.   
      I not only saved the bins in the storage unit for last, I also saved them for the last thing I would write about before getting to the memorial. These bins of children's books also represented Brian's last great attempt to redirect his life, and showed his amazing academic abilities, and his desire to care for and nurture children. These were sides of him that should be seen and remembered too, along with all the wildness, the laughter, the allure, and the darkness. 
      The books are also the perfect example just how many different lives he had, including some very unexpected ones. Everyone was shocked at first when he enrolled in the teaching program, but it soon all made sense. Children were fascinated by how he looked and entertained by how he acted. When I was with him around friends' kids, I would see for myself how they responded to him, and all the questions they would ask, and how they enjoyed hearing his answers. They brought out a different kind of Murphy magic that wasn't black like some of his other magic was, the kind that put spells on so many of us.
      

A card 'HAND-made' by the teacher who Brian bonded with
while he was Assistant Teacher in her classroom.

The classrooms where Brian survived and  thrived.

Just a tiny sampling of all the end of term good-bye
wishes Bri got from his students

Research on children stuttering.
Why in the world would he be
interested in that? 

                                                  
                                                  ***

                        

                   

THE MEMORIAL

                                                       

***  SOME SOUSED, SOME SOBER, ***

NO ONE SOMBER

Among Brian's collections of antique glass were an entire box full of 4"test tubes which were the perfect vessels to hold the remains of a man who sometimes considered himself to be a test tube.

             

     Getting the ashes into so many test tubes was not as easy I thought. With two of my ex's , Scott and Alex, helping to tap the ashes through two funnels that kept clogging, it still almost took two hours. The ashes of our two boxers, Bronski and Mack, which were part of the House Blend I was using, were grainier than Brian's ashes and were getting stuck in the narrow funnel tubes (the House Blend is 1/2 Brian, 1/4 each dog. It is how Brian wanted his ashes mixed, and it also gives me more ash to hand out).  By the last batch of test tubes it was looking like Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory. Brian's ashes were on the tabletop, in the carpet, on our clothes, in Scott's bowl of cereal, and up our noses (the irony).   

    The memorial was starting at noon, but I was expected at The Stud by 11 to help set-up. Paul King and Julie Tolentino, along with many other of Brian's old friends, had stepped in and rescued me from having to organize the event. Julie and Paul, you made it possible for this memorial to grow as big as it wanted and needed to.
  We finally got to The Stud just minutes before noon. I was carrying a long, shallow cardboard box filled with the test tubes that were all clanging together like a crystal chandelier in an earthquake. Scott was carrying a big square box that was gift-wrapped with a big bow, and Alex was holding Felon by the leash with one hand and carrying rolled-up poster-size blowups of photos showing Brian's amazing orb displays.
     The three of us looked at each other in amazement. It was a smorgasbord of Brian. Photos taped to the walls, doors and on the entire length of the bar top, videos playing on computers set up in viewing stations, and screens hanging down from the ceiling with slide show projections, all of Brian and his fellow performers and friends. The pool table was totally hidden, covered with huge sheets of different colored tissue paper. There were many pictures I had never seen before, which surprised me, considering I had gone through at least a thousand photos that Brian had boxed away. I felt more like a guest than a host.  Everything was set-up and ready for people to arrive. 
      In large part, it was due to all of Brian's old friends from his performance days who are almost all still in contact, and miraculously,have managed to stay sober in AA. Only members of AA or the Amish could get The Stud ready for a memorial so quickly. Like the Amish, members of AA band together and develop a strong sense of group, along with a sense of commitment and community. They are highly organized, can be quickly mobilized, and can pull from a pool filled with different talents. They also don't have to worry about anyone being hung-over from the night before.  It's said that the Amish can build a barn in a day. It should be also said that members of AA can build a barn just as fast, and, if they want to, a bar even quicker.
   The most amazing thing about their involvement in all there tributes to Brian is that some of them hadn't seen or spoken with Brian in years. They had no idea how he lived or how he looked, or if he saw anyone at all. All they could do was imagine the worst. But their love for him stayed unchanged and just as strong. It was astounding. I have never seen such an immense pouring out of love for one person in my entire life, especially for someone who was only a memory to some of them. His effect on people was incredibly powerful, and he was able to have extremely personal connections with multiple people that have remained, it seems, everlasting. And the most amazing part of all this love is that it came in equal doses from both men and women during the speeches and private conversations.
    Brian unique closeness with women was always something I wanted to understand better. For years I've tried to figure out what enabled Brian to open himself and draw so many women in. I thought it would always remain a mystery to me. 
   Then the answer came during one of the shortest speeches made. Taj said that some of the best nights she ever had were the ones she spent with Brian, laying naked together, spooning each other and talking until they fell asleep. This actually shocked me a little, just because it was so inconceivable for me to do with a woman. But then all of the sudden I saw what Brian's true magic was. It was what so few people can be. Brian Murphy was gender neutral. He was able to fully and completely enjoy and engage both men and woman in equal levels of closeness without letting gender even subtly limit, restrict, or guide how the friendships should be. Women sensed that he totally ignored their gender, which let them ignore it too. He allowed them to rise above the limits of it, in a world that hardly ever lets a woman forget about her gender.
    That's what made him so appealing to women. And doubly so to Dykes and Daggers. Brian could undress in front of women, take a shit in front of women, swing from meat hooks with women, stay out late with women, get into trouble or accidents with women, watch porn with women, borrow or trade clothes with women, do drugs with women, and do all of that exactly the same way he did it with men. The one difference was that he didn't have sex with women, which made anyone who had a penis feel a little more grateful and lucky.
    There was not enough time for everyone who wanted to speak out loud. People had so many stories and thoughts about Brian they wanted to share. Around an hour and a half was set aside for speaking, but it could have gone on for hours more if the memorial didn't have to end on time at 4 P.M., which was when Michael had said he needed to set-up The Stud for an evening event.
     People who were going to speak sat on stools on the dance floor at the edge of the stage and passed a microphone while everyone gathered in a wide circle around us.The first to speak was Aunt Susie. She had no idea how famous she was amongst those who knew what was important in Brian's life. She was being treated like royalty by everyone in Brian's world. People were lining up to meet her with stories of how much they knew she meant to Brian, and what a pivotal role she played in his survival and his sense of belonging. She had no idea how famous her sister Robyn was either, how everyone knew she died at 41. Brian had never shared his 'prophecy ' with Susie. Everyone else in his life had heard about it for years, but he never wanted to tell her. She was stunned by it, and humbled too.  She was part of a story that everyone knew, a story which was turning into a legend. 
    Brian had told her about the places he went and the things he did, but he never hinted at how deeply he was loved and admired and even idolized by the people who were now at his memorial confessing it to her. She didn't know what a big event Brian Murphy's death actually was, how news of it spread like wild fire across America and in Europe too. 
   When she spoke, she explained how shocked she was over the impact his death had on so many people besides her, how honored she was to be considered such a big part of Brian's story, and how proud she was of him. Susie was also the holder of Brian's history, the only one left who knew about his childhood and details of his parents life and their deaths. People hung on every word she said and every detail she described. She knew a Brian that nobody else knew, which made her words more captivating than any one's.
    I spoke after Susie. I had spent hours and hours writing a eulogy, but the mood was too intimate and relaxed for any kind of formal speech, so I ended up folding it away right before I started. I knew what I had to talk about anyway. I was so excited to start that I wasn't even thinking about my stutter as I took the microphone from Susie. She was at the memorial to fill in the blanks of Brian's past, but I was there to do something more crucial. I was there to paint a picture of what Brian's life was like before he died, for all the people who needed to know that it didn't spin too much out of control, and that it didn't end sadly. 
      "First of all, I want everyone to know that Brian Murphy was not the walking dead. He was not strung out in some hallway of some SRO." I pointed to the blown-up photos of Brian's amazing displays he created. "Those photos tell it all. That's why I had them made so big. I think everyone needed to actually see what kind of a space he created. The orb was a magical shape to him. It inspired him. As a matter of fact, I had actually never seen Brian as creative as he was in the past year. He was finally finding what his art was. He was a genius at display. I think it might have actually even been his true calling. It was something I didn't even realize until he was gone.  And that's probably because, in truth, I was too busy looking at him to notice what he was making. So believe me when I say that he created a truly wonderful space that anyone would have loved to live in. Now that that's out of the way,"  I said, leaning forward on the stool with a big smile, ready to be myself and have some fun, " I want everyone to know that Brian was still Brian, and he was still alot of fun. He could be just as playful as ever. He had these three disgusting-looking, fake, rubber pairs of what he called his "Jethro teeths ' that he would slip in while he was in mid-conversation with you, and then start speaking Hillbilly, which of course he spoke fluently. Classic Brian, right? Anything creepy, gross or trashy, he loved.

Brian's Jethro  Teeths

Sometimes he would wear them outside and go into stores with them. Of course, somehow he still looked sexy even with the  Jethro teeth on.   
    I  think these stupid teeth were probably one his most valuable possessions. I kept them for myself  even though when I try to wear them, they fall out every time I stutter. He actually wore them a week before he died when I was trying to have a very serious conversation with him, which is very hard to do in Hillbilly."  I smiled and was suddenly overwhelmed by a moment of sadness. I lowered the microphone and looked at the floor, waiting a few seconds until it passed. " Sorry, " I lifted the mic and grinned into it, looking up at the crowd again and repositioning myself on the stool. " I know my job here today is to fill all of you in about Brian's last few years. There are so many questions I'm getting from so many people. Everyone of course wants to know how Brian Murphy got the money to buy all the things he was collecting. When Aunt Susie  saw the apartment for the first time three weeks ago, she asked also. Brian didn't want her worrying about him more than she did already, so he never told her what his new job was. This meant I ended up having to tell her that Brian had become a successful 'chemical entrepenuer', " I said with quotation marks in the air. " Brian with money was such a strange concept for anyone who knew him. Before he started dealing, he never had anything in his wallet. If I wanted to go anywhere or do anything with him, I had to treat him. And I know I wasn't the only one. I'm sure everyone here at one time or another had to treat him to something he couldn't afford. Seeing that Brian Murphy turn into this Brian Murphy was extraordinary to watch. In the past, he hated shopping and was annoyed by people who collected things. Then around three years ago his wallet started to have a  little money in it, and he would come home with one new shirt , or one of something else. And when his wallet starting having more money in it, he starting coming home with two shirts. You get the picture. His spending got so out of hand that he had to get a storage unit. He would buy a spare of something, and then buy a spare of the spare. Shoes, sneakers, belts, boots, hats, sunglasses, watches, flashlights, dog leashes, tools, socks, jackets. He had no sense of when to stop, which was, in essence , the story of his life."  I  stood up from my stool and continued to speak into the microphone. " Nothing showed Brian's inability to stop shopping better than the orbs he collected and the underwear that he hoarded."  I climbed up the three steps to the stage and walked to the front of it where Scott had placed the big, gift-wrapped box. "Brian Murphy had a little issue with underwear. Mainly, he didn't like to give any away. Specifically, he didn't like to give any to me, because he knew I dressed up other guys in them. He stored them a certain ways in his underwear bins so he could tell if I tried to steal any. As torture, he would take out any new underwear he bought and dangle them in front of my face. This was cruel and unusual punishment because he knew how much I love underwear, or 'manties', as all my friends here know I call them. I had to beg him to give me even his worst pairs, " I laughed. " We would even have ridiculous fights about it. I called him The Manty Mongerer, and The Imelda Marcos of Manties. So," I said, kneeling down next to the gift-wrapped box, " For the crime of hoarding manties, and, as a thank you from Brian for helping him out all those years when he didn't have money, I give each of you something more valuable than money, I give you Brian Murph'ys undewear!"  I ripped open the top of the box and grabbed out two handfuls from the pile of them. "A gift from Brian to whoever wanted to get into his underwear but never had the chance to! The perfect thing to remember him by!" I said as I stood again. 
      People clapped and laughed, and some started shouting "Throw them!"
     " No, it might cause injuries. We don't want any riots," I laughed. " Just line up and take one,but only one!"
      " Are they clean ?!" someone else yelled out.
      "  Unfortunately yes. I'm sorry, " I apologized,which got several moans from the crowd.
        I walked down off the stage as people were forming a circle around the box . Believe it or not, Aunt Susie was first in line. As I passed the stage, an old friend of Brian's called out to me, proudly holding up the tighty-whities he just fought for. "Hey Gary, hope you got a pair for yourself."
  A pair? If he only knew. 


                                         ***

                                                     *

 When I  began the first ASHES blog, I said it was the end of my official mourning period. What I came to realize is that there is an unofficial mourning period after that. And that period isn't a period at all. It will last for the rest of my life. It is a more lonely mourning and has to be done much more privately because there is an unspoken limit of how much and how long people are expected to join you in your sadness and miss who you are still missing.                                        

           I am indulged and grateful and need no more. Thank you.

The House Blend with a dash of Bacon-Bits.
On my shelf, protected by his orbs

                   **************************************

 Let your legend go forth and make its noise. Come quietly now into that space that is yours and only yours in my heart, the same space that will stay yours and only yours until that heart beats no more.