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“Self-exploration is very painful, but unless you do that, you will never know who you are and who you want to be.” – Iris Apfel

The best way to get to know who you truly are is to take a step back and remove yourself from your own situation. This is not an easy thing to do. Most people are too afraid or uneasy to ever make motions in such a direction. We get to be very comfortable with ourselves, and removing us from our own experience is daunting at best, debilitating at worst. Yet I’ve found that distancing yourself from your own life from time to time can be a very valuable lesson. It allows you to see yourself from a more objective and analytical perspective, something that creates the space for honest assessment and personal growth. Whenever I find myself in moments of doubt and uncertainty, or when I feel a little lost or unsure of where I’m headed, I’ll pause for an interview, as much for the adoring fans that inhabit my mind as for the mind itself. At such times it is best to slip safely into the third person; it’s easier to face the harsher truths about yourself that way.

Thus was I summoned to Alan Ilagan’s Boston brownstone, where he waited for my arrival on the front stairs on a fine September afternoon. Turning onto Braddock Park at one of the quainter bends on the Southwest Corridor Park, I spy him instantly. He is looking toward the fountain in the middle of the street, leaning in to listen to its soothing trickle of water. He will tell me later that he sleeps on the couch on such nights, just so he can be nearer to the window to hear the fall of the water. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just my tendency to do so.

He nods at me from above, like the old friend I am. Today’s stance is one of silent benevolence, slightly royal in comportment but not overtly haughty. It’s the bearing of one who knows his worth, yet is not quite comfortable with others knowing it. A rather unbearable bearing when you think about it, and the puzzle that he often poses finds no further pieces falling into place. We shuffle them about some more…

He is waiting for friends, hence the extravagant get-up. Flowing pants in saturated tones of purple and maroon are festooned with elegant filigrees of gold. A lacy shirt accented by swirling whorls of lime-green sequins sparkles in the dappled sunlight of the afternoon. Around his neck hangs a tassel made up of fuchsia velvet balls, golden beads and sparkling crystals. His feet are encased in slippers of silken preciousness, with heels of green velvet and magenta flowers of the sheerest fabric. It sounds a bit of a mess but, as is often the infuriating case, he makes it work.

“Let’s go up for a cocktail,” he announces before I have a chance to consider sitting beside him.

We ascend the stairs to the second floor together. There is a deep reservoir of history here for him, yet none of it holds him down or makes things stuffy. If anything, there’s a certain freedom with such a bastion of the past to ground him so securely. That said, his heart is still slightly elsewhere, and that’s the way it’s always been. On this particular day, I sense it’s mostly with his husband, Andy.

“He will not be joining us this time,” Alan declares in a wistful tone, before giving a cursory summation of a recent blood clot and the ensuing travel ban that have stranded Andy in upstate New York, and in the many years that read into the growing lines of his face, I sense the concern and worry that he usually masks so well. This is a different Alan than the one I thought I knew. Every time I visit, it seems, he’s a little different. Often it goes with whatever project or theme that suits him for the moment. Many of us have seen him through various guises over the years, but this is one of the longer stretches we’ve been apart. Coming back will require some trust, some ice-breaking in the form of actual ice-breaking, as in the cocktail shaker he holds for one of the first Negronis of the fall season. Expertly shaving off a piece of orange peel, he pours a pair in spite of my weak protestations. “I’ll finish it if you really don’t want one,” he offers disdainfully. There’s something to be said for the comfort to be cruel. It’s a badge of honor for anyone who truly knows him, and in two decades of friendship I’m surprised by how few get this.

Sitting at the front window, the beauty and quiet of the moment strikes us both. As sunlight pours in through the bedroom – all bright white with accents of spring green (“That bedding is now out of season,” he admonishes, more an indictment of himself than me, who had absolutely nothing to do with the state of Alan’s bedding) – the afternoon slowly ripens into evening. Shirley Horn sings plaintively in the background (“the quintessential voice of fall”) and Alan hustles me through this initial interview as he has friends arriving for dinner. While keen to talk about the new project for this first reconvening of third person narrative in several years, it is enough to simply mark the beginning. The rest will come. We agree to meet the next day for a shopping session; he finds no therapy more potent than retail, and so I depart, leaving him to his impending guests.

{To Be Continued…}