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“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

There’s an epilogue to one of the ‘Grey Gardens’ documentaries that shows Little Edie touring the yard at the brink of winter. They had long since finished principal filming, and this looks and feels like a reunion of sorts after their summer together. A torn fur coat is draped over her shoulders as she surveys the damage of the colder seasons. All the leaves that provided such verdant drapery for the movie have been ripped from their perches and the land is bare but for the winding architecture of vines and tree limbs. It is comparatively somber, and Little Edie lets out plaintive coos about another oncoming winter.

I’m reminded of that scene when Alan brings me into his backyard in upstate New York, where the pool is still open but filled with dark leaves and swirling dead flowerheads from the once-glorious seven-sons-flower tree. He is not in a fur, but rather a colorful crocheted poncho made of yarn predominantly in a shade of flaming poppy red. A pair of jeans and a sensible yet still stylish pair of work boots complete this look, and once again his shape-shifting leaves a new impression. His scent is both intoxicating and off-putting for anyone other than cologne aficionados. I like it on him. I can’t imagine it on me. “Don’t worry,” he tells me. “It’s a secret combination of Tom Ford Private Blends. You’d never be able to conjure it. I probably couldn’t do it again either.”

He is equally imperious and self-deprecating today. If you’ve only heard about him or experienced him from his website, you might be surprised at how easily and quickly he will burst into laughter, often at his own expense. As we survey the wilted baskets still hanging from the canopy frame, Alan pulls the long, limp, lifeless length of a sweet potato vine off one of the patio lounge chairs. It has apparently been a long time since anyone sat outside. “We are but one step away from the poor-man’s version of ‘Grey Gardens’! And maybe not even that far…”

Inside, Andy is up to his own machinations in the kitchen. It makes for a cozy scene, these two gentlemen about to entertain for family and friends on a fall afternoon. “Let’s sit outside for a bit, while we still can,” he implores, brushing off more leaves from one of the chairs. “I love being on the verge of cold weather. It affords so many more wardrobe options.” A collection of gold crosses and chains dangles from his wrist, and he asks about favorite fall libations that he might have on hand for me. I venture a few beer selections, at which he scoffs. “I meant a real drink. This isn’t grade school.”

A simple yet potent Manhattan later (“note the Bada Bing cherries, do!”), I’m under his spell, and an afternoon that at first looked bleak and gray has blossomed into a rich wonderland of autumnal beauty. The sun slants through the fine fiery fronds of a Japanese maple and the ripe heads of a tree hydrangea, still holding onto their rich salmon shades. Alan is going on about the virtues of a certain Sweet Vermouth when Andy opens the door and asks what I want for dinner. A charmed existence indeed. 

A spaghetti and meatballs dish ordered and en route, I return us to the task at hand, and though talk of the ‘PVRTD’ project “feels almost blasphemous” on such a gorgeous day, Alan is game for more. But only a little more. “Must we sully the afternoon this way?” he asks himself almost inaudibly at one point. The air grows colder as our afternoon wears on. He folds his arms over his chest and wonders whether he should grab a hat. At such an idyllic autumn moment, it is difficult to place the horrors of humanity that are hinted at in the new project. Yet it pervades even this escapist space of respite. At the bottom of my almost-empty Manhattan, a cherry of the darkest red bleeds sweet juice and takes its final dying breath. I swallow the last of such bourbon-soaked sweetness and contemplate the predicament of an empty cocktail glass.

We touch a bit on the more controversial photographs in ‘PVRTD’. There are references both blatant and subtle made to the Holocaust, white supremacy, and the KKK – and it’s always dangerous to reference that kind of historical pain. As a gay man of a certain age, and a bi-racial minority from an inter-racial marriage, Ilagan has his own history of prejudice and pain. Though he comes from a position of financial stability, he can get away with a bit more because he also speaks from inside a place of first-hand prejudice. Before the choruses of ‘faggot’ as he got older, there were the students who poked fun of his Filipino heritage.

“Some of them thought I was Chinese,” he remembers, “And would pull their eyes into slits to make fun of me. And there was one kid who simply would not believe that I was NOT the Asian actor from ‘The Goonies’ – he insisted it was me. He was not really making fun of me, he just couldn’t get his head around the fact that the world was comprised of different people outside of those who attended St. Mary’s religious class in Amsterdam, New York.” He laughs a little at that memory.

Racism wasn’t always as direct as that, and most of his childhood and formative years would be divided between those who favored and doted on him as the first-born son of Dr. and Mrs. Ilagan, and those who eyed him suspiciously in stores, or substitute teachers who seemed harsher to him than to others. Is there any hard-proof that some of these adults treated him differently because of his race? No. That’s the insidious nature of latent racism; one usually never quite knows. But it’s there.

Homophobia was a little more easy to ferret out, particular when people would yell ‘faggot’ as he walked past, but it was no more easy to accept. The world has made strides toward equality, but the current administration and the things we are seeing daily on the news indicate a backlash against acceptance and love. In some respects we seem to be going back in time to a more sinister era when racism and homophobia were the accepted order of the day. Some of the same conditions are in place, some of the same hatred has risen to the surface, and some of it is sanctioned by the uppermost levels of our government.

The photographs of ‘PVRTD’ illustrate the perverted nature that society dictates and builds into existence. It’s dangerous folly to think that something similar won’t happen again – gays are being killed around the world, especially transgender people – and the suicide rates for both groups are exponentially higher than heterosexuals. What if it’s not a sickness that’s born with them, but one that society has imposed and created from years of oppression and hatred? What if the perversion is not of nature, but a man-made symptom? It gets into a dicey and difficult area, and such questions are not blatantly asked, which is another departure for Ilagan. (He has, of his own admission, veered into heavy-handed hamming when it comes to making a point or illustrating a thesis). ‘PVRTD’ offers no such up-front explanation to its images, and even less of a defense for the more incendiary photographs.

He himself gives no easy answer, no kumbaya save-the-world push for peace, no bumper-sticker feel-good turn of phrase – only the cold images that echo the barbarism from our past. It’s easy to think of the Ku Klux Klan and their burning crosses as the stuff of ancient history, to relegate the Holocaust and its Anti-Semitism to the sepia-toned memory corridor of long ago; Ilagan brings a renewed recreation of those horrific images not only to remind, but also to reveal. What does it inspire in the viewer? Outrage? Apathy? Disgust? Dismissal? Why does the very notion of a burning cross cause such a commotion? And if we push it away, if we avoid it and bury it and pretend it doesn’t have a place in today’s world, why couldn’t it happen again? More than ripples of such hatred have been making waves in America. The latent racism and tamped-down hatred of certain groups has found fissures and outlets to release itself, and certain individuals and political parties seem to embrace this dangerous divide. Ilagan wants to hold them to the light, to bring them forth from their caverns and basements and hidden recesses and reveal them for what they are. That can get messy, especially when he doesn’t offer a clear-cut answer. ‘PVRTD’ takes its premise of how hatred perverts the natural order of love with which most humans are intrinsically born, and makes the bold stance that the historically ‘perverted’ categories of people have been made so by the actions of those denying them their true nature. ‘Gay reparative therapy’ with its electroshock treatments and cruel, forced method of eradicating the ‘gayness’ of its subjects is the most glaring example of this. To cure a ‘pervert’, one need only force them into a hetero-normative situation and mindset.

The oppressiveness of this dark new world sinks into both of us as we head inside for a refill. Andy says that my dinner plate will be ready in a few minutes. Alan is working on a bourbon cocktail for fall, as family will be arriving for dinner soon. He arranges a circle of gold-rimmed glasses on a smoky mirrored tray then disappears for a wardrobe change. I spend the remainder of my time with Andy, enjoying his homemade meatballs and feeling cared for in a way I don’t often get from my own family.

I have to leave before Alan emerges in his latest finery, so I can’t report what he was wearing for that evening’s gathering, but we have one more official interview before I can return to my status as friend and confidante…

{To Be Continued… Also see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4}

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