The Real Legacy of Edward Norman

Dear Edward,

Every morning, before I start my day, I wash my face. And I think of you. 

Every night, when I wash my face or, let’s be real, when I decide I’m too tired to wash my face, I think of you. 

Whenever I consider purchasing a new skin care product, which is far too frequent, and it’s you I can thank for this obsession, I wonder: Would you approve? 

The truth is, even though you died nearly eight years ago, I think of you every day. The memories start and end with skin care, but in-between, you come to mind when I think of everything from barbed wire to Gwyneth Paltrow to black nylon Prada bags.  

Back to skin care. Consistency is the key to a successful routine, you used to tell me, though the many scientific-sounding and bewildering products strewn across your bathroom vanity — seriously, cold plasma? — somewhat belied your advice. 

I still refer frequently to the multi-page, handwritten skin care regimen you concocted for me years ago. But to be honest, Edward, I sometimes buy products of which you would most certainly disapprove. 

A Potentially Twirled Jar of La Mer Neck Cream

For example, I fell down a La Mer rabbit role recently. The brand’s products are ridiculously expensive; the neck cream alone is $330. While I suspect you’d appreciate La Mer’s proprietary “Miracle Broth” ingredients and the French name, your eyebrows would have shot skyward if you’d seen me purchase that neck cream for $80 on eBay. 

You’d have challenged me: How would I know the product isn’t several years old and had therefore lost its efficacy? For that matter, how would I know it hadn’t been stolen — or “twirled,” as you’d have said — by some skin care outlaw, no doubt affiliated with a nefarious retail crime syndicate? 

With your consternation as my muse, I eventually did some Googling and learned about batch codes — which are, in essence, a freshness date on skin care products. Turns out, that $80 neck cream I bought was nearly three years old. 

No more skin care on eBay for me.  

Every time my hair stylist paints over the gray on my temples, I think of you. As a seasoned stylist and educator, you used to color your hair frequently. I never quite knew what hair color to expect when I’d arrive in Charlotte for one of our visits — though my favorite of your various self-coloring experiments, at least for its name, was “Autumn Wheat.” 

During one of our last phone calls, I asked what color your hair was at that moment. “Soot,” you replied. When I asked why, you said you’d applied a medium-brown hair dye, set a timer for 12 minutes, and promptly conked out. When you awakened more than 45 minutes later, you raced to the mirror and gasped. 

“My hair’s the same color as Elizabeth Taylor’s in those White Diamonds commercials!,” you said, and we both had a good laugh.

What’s in That Paper Bag?

You developed a fascination with beauty and skin care at an early age. When you were an elementary school boy, living in the country in Morganton, N.C., you were itching to spend birthday money. You asked your father to take you to the drug store so you could spend it. 

“What on, son?,” he wondered. You answered vaguely, but you knew exactly what you wanted, because you’d seen it advertised on TV. 

Your father waited while you entered the store. When you returned with your treasure concealed in a paper bag, he wanted to know: “What’d you buy, son?” 

Again, your response was vague. But during the car ride home, your father gently persisted. Reluctantly, you revealed your purchase: a white jar of Jergens Face Cream, capped by a pink lid, decorated with the heads of a blonde, brunette and redhead. Your father moaned in quiet dismay, not unlike Lurch on “The Addams Family.” 

(By the way, Edward, would you believe someone was recently selling a jar of that same 1960s Jergens Face Cream on eBay? Do you think it has lost its efficacy?) 

We used to laugh about the Jergens Face Cream adventure, and I never tired of hearing about it. 

But there were other stories of your childhood that still haunt me. 

A Harrowing Decision

As an overweight gay boy in the 1960s rural South, you were bullied relentlessly with taunts like “fat sissy!” Or worse. Classmates would call you on the phone and threaten to kill you. 

One day after school, several boys chased you through a pasture until they cornered you by a barbed wire fence. You faced a harrowing decision: Escape through the fence or get beaten up. You chose the fence. It would have been easier to tell your family you did something crazy and crawled through barbed wire than to confess you’d been battered by other boys. 

Despite the many successes you had later — you ran the top salon in Charlotte for years; even Gwyneth Paltrow visited while in Charlotte making a movie — you could never stop hearing those childhood taunts in your head. 

Why Women Rushed Up to You in Restaurants

How, I wonder, did you emerge from those years to become an exceptionally kind, sweet soul? 

I believe that being bullied helped you become empathetic to others. Though redneck boys tried to take you down, you responded by getting out of Morganton when you were 21, landing in Charlotte, and beginning a career of lifting up women — and men. 

You did more than just make Charlotteans look good. Any skilled hair stylist or makeup artist can do that. You made them feel good. Treasured, even. And for that, you earned their love and loyalty. 

I saw this in action time and time again. You and I would be in a Charlotte restaurant and a client of yours would inevitably rush across the crowded dining room to give you a big hug, even if she’d just seen you a day or two before. You were beloved, to the extent that I can count at least five people — myself included — who considered you their best friend. You left many good things behind. But to me, this is your real legacy. 

But what made you a best friend? I knew I could tell you absolutely anything — things I couldn't tell anyone else — and you’d truly listen. You’d understand. You’d often offer good advice. And though you might kid me about whatever I confessed later, you didn’t judge me. 

Here’s something else I’d say about you: You were resilient. Whatever obstacles stood in your path — and I witnessed many over the course of our 36-year friendship — you always found a way around them. 

Well, almost always. 

What to Do About the Void?

The shoulder pain, the back pain, the neck pain, the spinal stenosis, all of which were exacerbated by standing up all day attending to your clients; how did you endure it as long as you did? By my count, despite multiple surgeries and a nylon Prada bag bulging with bottles of pain killers, you lived in nearly endless agony for at least 12 years.  

When you died, in October 2016, I tried to find comfort in the knowledge that you were no longer in pain. But all I could focus on, then and now, was that I hadn’t been there for you when death suddenly came. And that there was an enormous void in my life — one that has not, can never, be filled.

My therapist counseled me not to try and fill that void. Live with it. Learn from it. Grow from it. What he didn’t say, but I’ve since learned, is that the void you left is part of what keeps you so alive for me.    

Two Young Men in Manhattan

The other night, probably because I’ve been thinking about you more than usual, as what would have been your 65th birthday approaches, I had a dream about you. 

We were on our way to a Broadway play. We were young and dressed improbably in spring clothes, though it was the dead of winter. As we walked toward Times Square, the wind lifted the scarf off my neck and wrapped it around the leg of a woman walking behind me. Before I knew what I was doing, I lunged for the scarf — and the woman cursed me in what sounded like Italian. You and I laughed long and hard about this. 

As I woke up, I was smiling. But I soon realized I hadn’t been dreaming. It was a memory. That scarf incident actually happened, during our first trip together to Manhattan, when we were in our early 20s and had everything before us. Or so we thought. 

In that waking moment, I felt the void again. Damn, it still hurts. 

My alarm went off. It was time to start another day. So, I walked into the bathroom. And as I washed my face, I thought of you. 

Municipal Anarchy: What it Was Like to Be Among San Francisco’s First Same-Sex Married Couples in February 2004

Twenty years ago, my then-partner Nick and I participated in an act of “municipal anarchy.”

In other words: We got married. For the first time but not, as it turned out, the last. 

On Friday morning, Feb. 13, 2004, Nick set aside the San Francisco Chronicle, turned to me at our dining room table, and asked, "Do you want to get married today?” 

Recently elected San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom had made national, if not global, headlines by defying state and federal laws and encouraging same-sex couples to come to City Hall and get married.   

I’d just returned from visiting my mother in North Carolina and was groggy from jet lag and lack of caffeine. So I hesitated. "Let me finish my latte before I answer,” I said.

But I already knew my response. After a few sips, I rose from my chair. "Let’s do it. While we still can.”

Next came a frenzy of phone calls to close friends. "Meet us at City Hall at 11:00,” we announced. “We're getting married…today!"

We dressed hastily and like firemen to a fire, we raced to City Hall, where we encountered hundreds of other couples lined up to get marriage licenses. 

Everywhere we looked, at the bottom of the City Hall Rotunda’s grand staircase, up the steps, behind the steps, to the sides of the steps and in the hallways, amidst cheers and high fives, couples were exchanging their vows. I’d never seen anything quite like it before. Or since — with one possible exception.

And yet, as Nick and I inched forward in the line, I felt conflicted. 

On the positive side, after almost 23 years together, Nick and I were getting married! I thought back to 1979, when two of my sisters were married within a month of each other. At the last of the weddings, several people asked me, "When are you getting married?" 

After what seemed like the tenth time I’d been asked this question, I offered up a cheeky response:

"Just as soon as it's legal." 

Now, all these years later, I was about to get married at last. But would it be, in fact, legal? 

Beyond the fabulous bubble of queer acceptance that is San Francisco, as well as Massachusetts and a few other places here and there, support for same-sex marriage was largely non-existent at the time.  

In fact, on that Friday when Nick and I exchanged our vows, “opponents of gay marriage sought two separate injunctions to stop the (San Francisco) county clerk from issuing the licenses, declaring that the new policy amounted to ‘municipal anarchy,’ in the words of one of their lawyers,” The New York Times reported the next day.

Same-sex marriage wasn’t legally recognized in California. Nor was it legal on a federal level. Bill Clinton had signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, denying federal recognition of same-sex marriages. George W. Bush, who was President at the time of the San Francisco municipal anarchy, was talking about a constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex marriages.

Other forces that be — my mother — would be equally opposed, as I would soon discover.

At last, Nick and I obtained our marriage license. From there, we were connected with a pale young man with red hair who officiated our ceremony. Surrounded by friends, Nick and I placed the wedding rings we’d already been wearing for years — because why not? — on each other’s hands. 

Our friend Mary wrangled a local radio news reporter and brought her and her colleague over to where we were getting married. That afternoon, we made the local news broadcast. Even though the reporter got both of our last names wrong, Nick’s boss later told him, "I heard you getting married on the radio! I'd know your voice anywhere!"

“Why Did You Want to Get Married?” 

Over the weekend, I teetered between exhaustion, elation and uncertainty. How would I introduce Nick to strangers now? As my husband? That felt odd. Or should I continue to call him my partner? That didn’t feel right, either.

A few straight friends we shared our news with were supportive but also a bit concerned, or maybe just confused. "Why did you want to get married, if you’re already domestic partners? Especially since your marriage will probably be annulled?"

After congratulating us, a gay acquaintance asked, “Why did you want to adopt a heteronormative tradition? Shouldn’t the queer community create our own traditions?”

Both had asked us essentially the same question: Why?

Here’s why: Domestic partnership was, to us, second-class citizenship. Separate — and not equal. 

Also, we believed we deserved the same benefits — financial, legal, societal — that other couples enjoy.  

There were other reasons. 

Nick and I had connected instantly, nearly 23 years earlier, when we were both living in a small Southern city. We had to hide our relationship — our true natures — for years, for fear of losing our jobs. We made it through the terrifying AIDS epidemic together. We made the momentous move to the West Coast together.

And every day, we can’t wait to sit next to each other at breakfast. That was true in 1981; it was true in 2004; it is true today; it will be true tomorrow.

So. Why did we get married? Because we wanted to.  

With Sweaty Palms, I Called My Mother 

Also during that weekend, I worked up the courage to tell my mother the news. 

I could have waited to share the news — or just not told her at all, which is what one of my sisters suggested. But I’d learned in psychotherapy, and from life experience, that avoiding potential conflict with someone you care about is a poor strategy. It just makes the deferred conflict worse when it inevitably happens. 

The Sunday after our wedding, with sweaty palms, dry throat, and pounding pulse, I called my mother. She answered cheerfully, with that charming North Carolina lilt in her voice — “Hey hon-EY!”

After a few pleasantries, I told her about the weddings at City Hall, and that Nick and I were among the hundreds of gay and lesbian couples who had gotten married. 

She was quiet for a few, long seconds. And then: "Why did you have to go and do that?" 

I gave her our reasons. “Well,” she said, after another pause. “I feel like I lost my son!” And then she hung up. 

I wanted to call her back. I hadn’t expected her to approve, but I was hoping she might understand, at least a little. 

After about five days, I called her back. She sounded like her old self, greeting me with that familiar lilt.  

I made small talk for a minute or so. Then I asked if she’d thought any more about our last conversation.

”What conversation?”

Startled, I reminded her of my news — only to endure her ire again, as white-hot as it had been the first time. 

“I can see you’re not ready to talk about this in a calm manner,” I said. “So I’ll talk to you later.” She was about to respond when I hung up.

I was upset but mostly baffled. How could she not remember that conversation? 

Soon enough, I was to recognize this as the moment when my mother’s decline into dementia could no longer be ignored. 

An Ending, A Beginning, Another Ending, Another Beginning

The “municipal anarchy” ended March 11, 2004, when the California Supreme Court ordered San Francisco not to issue any additional licenses that didn’t conform to state marriage statutes.

In August 2004, the 4,000-some same-sex marriage licenses issued in San Francisco were declared void. Nick and I went back to being domestic partners — and returned to City Hall along with other couples to mark the one-year anniversary. (See TV news clip below.)

In June 2008, California began allowing same-sex couples to get married. We raced back to City Hall for our second wedding on June 27, 2008. 

But would this one stick? We had reason to wonder.

Later that year, Proposition 8 passed in California, closing the door again on same-sex marriages across the state. This time, however, the marriage licenses previously granted to queer couples remained valid.

Same-sex marriages were allowed to resume in California beginning in late June, 2013. 

If all of this back-and-forth is making your head spin, you’re not alone. I’ll spare you the ongoing battles and cut to the victory:   

In late June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that state bans against same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. As luck would have it, the ruling, which made it possible for queer couples to be married in any state, and to have those marriages recognized in any state, happened just a few days before the annual San Francisco Pride parade. 

At the last minute, Nick and I decided to jump into the parade. Wearing ridiculous foam wigs, because why not?, we held hands as we marched down Market Street. On either side, jubilant, ecstatic paradegoers cheered us on — which reminded me of the elated well-wishers when we were first married, on that February day 11 years earlier.   

Nick, who always knows how to play to the crowd, suddenly called out, “We got married…TODAY!,” inciting even bigger whoops and whistles. He turned to face the parade goers on the opposite side of the street and repeated his claim, which received an equally ecstatic response. 

Ever the pragmatist, I turned to Nick. "Baby, that's not true," I said.  

"They don't know that," he responded, waving to the cheering crowd. "And look how happy it makes them. Don’t you think we all deserve to be happy right now?” 

I thought about it for a moment. We'd been through so much together as a couple in recent years. And who knew what the future would bring? Would same-sex marriage be taken away yet again? Despite the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act becoming federal law, I knew all too well that the political pendulum swings and laws change.  

I looked into the beaming faces of strangers who were applauding us. Before I knew it, I let out a quiet whoop, followed by a louder one. Then I held Nick's hand up in victory, kissed him on the lips. And before I knew it, the next words that came out of my mouth were: 

"We got married...TODAY!"