Angus Whyte

My mother's favorite scent was violet, and as a young child I learned to please her on birthdays or Mother's Day with perfumes and colognes such as "English Violet" and "Devon Violets," that one more foreign because it was packaged in a delicate white, porcelain jug, instead of a glass bottle. It never occurred to me to attempt to grow them, because violet was a "girly" smell and certainly not appropriate for boys.

Violets are not easy to grow, it turns out, and it wasn't until I lived in Los Angeles, many years later, in a glass house on a hill halfway between downtown L.A. and Pasadena, that a tile shelf above the kitchen sink proved to be a perfect place for violets to thrive, and never since have I been successful in growing them.

Decades ago, when I lived in Boston with my first long-term boyfriend Eddie, there was a popular gay bar at the foot of Beacon Hill, just across from Massachusetts General Hospital. It was easily accessible by public transport and equidistant from Harvard Square and downtown. Called "Sporter's", it was a dirty, sleazy, dump of a place, run by an overweight, good-natured, Irish fellow called Bob who never seemed able to remember anyone's name.

Eddie and I lived on Pinckney Street, just off Charles, and we often dropped into Sporter's late in the evening, after a concert or a movie, and after a few years we became irregular "regulars" there. Despite its ugliness, Sporter's was popular with boys from Harvard, MIT, Northwestern, Emerson, Tufts and various other colleges and schools in the area, as well as with occasional out-of-towners, businessmen, soldiers, and sailors. I liked the variety and mix there.

I met Ted, a hunky local boy with a fetching, thick Boston accent, and every four or five months, when we were both at the bar late and hadn't met anyone new, we would end up together. Another fellow, a handsome, sexy black man called Tom, was another memorable, occasional trick over many years. One of my favorite Sporter's friends was Allyn, an iconoclastic artist who lived in a cold-water, walk-up flat, which I considered inconceivable in wintry New England. Allyn, a true regular at the bar, wore shoulder-length, blond hair, which he would wash once in a while, and over which he would place a white cowboy hat with a rabbit-fur band and a couple of pigeon feathers.

Allyn made beautiful silverpoint drawings, with a delicacy and refinement that belied his bohemian appearance. He also had a wild side, which eventually led to his demise one Summer when I was vacationing in France. The story circulated that he dropped a tab of LSD atop a friend’s roof and decided he could fly. Before that unhappy moment, luckily I had engaged him to paint a mural of his own design, which he entitled "Muriel", above the wainscoting in our 19th century dining room – a fête champêtre he produced in muted, sepia colors portraying fauns and nymphs disporting themselves in sylvan groves and grottoes. Funny, sardonic, usually broke, and often drunk, I can still hear him as we walked into the bar, calling out: "Hey, guys, how about a smart cocktail de choize?" which meant he wanted a fresh can of beer.

Once in a while Eddie and I would pick up a lonely fellow and take him home for fun, music, and sex, because those were the days before AIDS and before the world became suspicious and terrified, and it was not uncommon to meet a guy, connect, and invite him home for the night - and sometimes keep him over for breakfast. In fact, over the twelve years we lived in Boston, a number of these fellows became good friends.

In addition to Sporter's, there were other popular gay hangouts in town: The Napoleon, which fancied itself an upscale, darkly elegant club, with velvet walls, an upstairs bar featuring paintings and prints of the Emperor adorning every wall and corner, gentlemen in suits (or tuxedos, and from time to time, even white tie and tails); The Other Side, located in Boston's "Combat Zone", for intrepid slumming with a dark, dangerous, exotic and mysterious clientele; the Purple Orchid, the city's longest-running "servicemen's bar", which opened during WWII and remained popular until the late '70's, when it vanished, to be replaced by a group of newer, louder, and younger discos and clubs.

Eddie liked to hang out at The Tool Box, a “leather bar” downtown near the Boston Conservatory of Music, where our friend Danny Pinkham would occasionally drop in for a beer after teaching. One day I asked him: "Danny, what would happen if you should run into one of your students here?" And without a moment's hesitation, he answered, in his impeccable, flutey New England tones, "You can't be seen in a place you don't frequent."

I found the clientele at Sporter's more congenial, and from time to time Eddie and I would both arrive home with a new trick in tow, in those gentler and easier times. One night, out on my own, I encountered a slim, handsome young man wearing chinos, a light blue shirt, and a dark sweater. One of his eyes was mossy green and the other light blue, and he exuded genteel charm and understated savoir faire. We would occasionally run into each other, and eventually I worked up courage enough to ask his name and invite him home for the night. He was a dream date, with soft skin, light brown hair with red gold highlights, and a languid, intoxicating beauty. We made love and fell asleep for awhile, and I awoke to the scent of violets. Knowing there were no flowers in the room, I realized it was Bill, who was blessed with a completely natural scent of violets, which I had never before or since experienced. We showered and shared coffee in the morning, and off he went into his day and I into mine. I can still picture him clearly in my mind’s eye and often dreamed of his sweet lips and unique scent of violets, hoping for another night with him. Occasionally we would meet in the bar and converse briefly, and once I ran into him downtown at midday with an older woman, whom he introduced as his aunt, and we shared a lovely lunch together, following which I never saw him again, yet never forgot him or his scent of violets.