Page 12 of Exquisite Things

The rain has stopped. Replaced by the tears of Lily’s chosen family. Downpours and drizzles in the eyes of young and old as

“Who’s Mr. Alfred Buxton?” That’s one of the young queers. Beautiful Black boy. Hair tightly braided. Beard. Worn jeans. Baggy

brown wool sweater. A soft knitted scarf in the colors of the Jamaican flag. I’m certain Lily must have made it. Her voice

comes back to me: Only national flag with no red, white, or blue. Jamaicans can’t help but be unique.

Archie takes his top hat off. Wipes the sweat from his wrinkled forehead. “I honestly don’t know, Tobi. What matters is that

this lily pond is where our beloved Lily chose her name.” Archie’s hair is gone. His scalp is bald. Spotted with discoloration.

I don’t dare step forward and risk being seen, even though it’s not them I’m afraid of being found by.

God, how I missed them all. Dancing with Archie.

Learning from Azalea. Eating Poppy’s home-cooked meals.

She loved nothing more than emptying a tin of cayenne pepper into whatever she was making.

We would all cry and laugh when we ate together.

Jerk chicken. Pepper pot soup. Fried fish. We always wanted more.

“Poppy, it’s your turn to lead the procession. Get up here.”

The crowd parts so that Poppy can make her way up to the plaque. She lifts the bell bottoms of her red velvet jumpsuit to

make sure they don’t fall into a puddle. She’s shrunk too. She leaps over one of the puddles carefully. “Move over, Archiekins.”

Poppy takes a dramatic pause before beginning to tell the story. “Lily and I wandered into these gardens on a rare sunny December

day. It was 1973. Earlier that year, London had celebrated its very first Gay Pride march.”

“It was 1972!” The beautiful Black boy named Tobi has his phone out. All the knowledge in the world in the palm of his hand.

Except the things that can’t be turned into data. The hidden emotional truths you can’t ask a search engine about. How things

felt .

Poppy doesn’t bristle at being corrected or interrupted. “So it was. Back then, we didn’t have no phones like yours to check

a date on the spot. Nor to distract us from our lives . So when we would walk, we would observe. We would think.”

I hide behind the trunk of an oak tree when I see Poppy’s gaze travel toward me.

“You might think the first Gay Pride made for a joyful year, but as I remember it, this was not the case. It was a profound

moment of despair for us. We hadn’t found ourselves yet. Lily’s heart had recently been broken by a little twat who—” Poppy

stops herself. “You know what, he was a twat, but he died far too young and I won’t speak ill of the fallen souls. What happened

is this. Lily told me that she wanted her life to end. By this very pond, at this exact spot, in 1972.”

In the crowd, a few audible sobs as the mourners contemplate never having known Lily.

“I asked her why, and she said that there was no future for her. She said that she felt no liberation when she attended that

very first Gay Pride parade. None of the joy or freedom that her gay and lesbian friends felt. Because she wasn’t like them.

What she was, as we all know, was a woman. Like me, though she understood herself before I did. This was before the two of

us saved up for our surgical trip to Casablanca. Thanks for nothing, NHS.”

Lily understood so much before others did. This was one of her many superpowers. A profound understanding of the human condition.

“I begged her to stay strong. To keep going.” Poppy wipes a single tear from her cheek. “I don’t want to take any credit for

what happened next, because I don’t think she was even listening to me. She was staring at the pond as if in a trance. The

sun seemed to be shining on her alone. Nature’s spotlight. What I need you to understand is that she was being reborn in that

moment. None of us are born only once.”

How I know this to be true.

“When she came out of her trance, she turned to me and declared that from that day on, she would be known as Lily.” Poppy

nods. “And that is how our beloved Lily Summers came to be born.”

The mourners bow their heads down to honor the personal history of this spot.

“On to our next destination, the National.” Poppy turns to Archie. He raises his top hat into the sky. “Follow Archie’s top

hat. Funny, such a big top hat for such a big bottom!” Everyone laughs. No one louder than Archie himself.

I pick up a newspaper someone left on a park bench and cover my face with it as I follow them. Even in London, the New York Times can easily be found. That’s why Oliver and I chose that paper. We had to make sure to choose a means of communication that

would work no matter where we were. I took out the same ad every day for the last month, to ensure he would see it. He must

have seen it. Where is he?

The mourners stop outside the National Theatre, where Lily first worked as a seamstress for the theater in 1980. It was for

the National’s production of The Romans in Britain . Oliver and I were at opening night. The play was magnificent. It juxtaposed the stories of Caesar’s invasion of Celtic Britain

with the country’s relationship to Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. Panic. Either Oliver is here, or I’ve been found and life as I know it is over. I turn around.

I’m ready to bolt if I need to.

“Would you take a photo of us all together?” a tourist asks me as she holds out her iPhone.

I feel relief that I haven’t been found. Disappointment that it wasn’t Oliver. “Of course.”

I take the phone and position myself with my back to Lily’s memorial crew. I snap-snap-snap. Azalea speaks behind me. “Of

course, no one remembers those gorgeous costumes Lily helped sew. No, what they remember is the moral panic the play caused

because it dared to depict gay rape onstage. People threw things at the actors. Fireworks. Flour. Disgusting fools.”

“Jesus.” That’s Tobi again. I get the sense he’s learning Lily’s history today. I wonder how long he knew her.

“Yes, exactly.” Azalea laughs. “Jesus was indeed involved. A Christian activist sued the director for gross indecency. Mary Whitehouse. An absolutely loathsome woman who knew nothing of Jesus’s true teachings. Her hatred is the real gross indecency.”

Gross indecency. The words remind me of Wilde. His life. His work. Those trials.

“Can you take a vertical one?”

“And some in portrait mode, please?”

I oblige the family. They’re giving me a perfect way to be a part of the memorial without being a conspicuous observer.

Gross indecency. Wilde. The man who inspired me and destroyed me. And not just me. I’m not claiming his pages made others immortal. I do believe

Oliver and I are the only ones. But Wilde slept with young men, then disposed of them. He insisted on suing for libel despite

knowing the accusations against him were true. His trial created assumptions about gay men that last to this day. Sexual compulsion.

Criminality. He doesn’t deserve to be a symbol for our community. But perhaps Wilde isn’t the problem. Never was. The problem

is turning people into symbols in the first place. Defending their flaws because we think their mistakes belong to everyone

in our community. Wilde wasn’t perfect. That much I know.

Then again, neither am I.

I want to be loved as Wilde still is. For my beauty and my flaws. My light and my darkness. That’s what I need from Oliver.

Oliver?

Is that him in the background of the photo I just took of the tourists?

I’m still in portrait mode. The background is out of focus. I go to the photo. Zoom in to the blurry chestnut-haired figure

standing hesitantly by a lamppost. Half his face covered by the very newspaper I placed the ad in. It’s his stance. He has a way of leaning forward. Always craning that gloriously long neck to see more of the world.

I return the phone. I feel dizzy with excitement as I search the crowds for him. Tourists everywhere. Splashes of street art

in primary colors. A cluster of onlookers watch adolescent skateboarders athletically leap across ramps. The hungry line up

at a Mexican food truck. Theatergoers flood into the National.

Where is he?

“Shall we go to our next stop?” Azalea is still in charge of the procession. She turns to Archie. “Follow the bottom’s top

hat!”

“I’m too old, too tired, and too talented to be bottom shamed.” Archie cackles. “And by a nurse, no less.”

“Same nurse who got you the meds you needed when the world turned its back on you.” Azalea puts an arm around Archie. “Think

that earns me the right to mock you mercilessly.”

“I suppose so.” Archie leans a head on her shoulder.

They head toward the Queen’s Walk. I know the route. They’ll head south to Brixton after the Queen’s Walk. To our home. To

Pearl’s. Then back to the Thames for sunset. I don’t follow them. I turn my head left. Then right. I search near and far.

I push through the crowds. Desperate to find him.

Memories flood my mind: London with Oliver.

And also: London before Oliver.

Those years before I met him. Those early days when I still wasn’t certain those flames changed me forever.

“Oliver!”

I see a figure on the bridge. Staring out at the river. He’s too far for me to be sure. I run. “OLIVER!”

The faster I run...

The closer I get...

The more certain I am it’s him.