My Strange Relationship with Lori Blue

 
Lori Blue, photo by Michael Draga

(This story is mostly true. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent, so if you see your name, that should tell you something about yourself.)

This month marks what would have been my late father’s birthday and the first anniversary of my mother’s death. I’m thinking a lot about the people I’ve lost. For reasons that are somewhat beyond me, today I’m thinking about Lori Blue.

I share a relationship with Lori Blue unlike any that I’ve had with anyone else. In all the years that I knew her (the last four of her life) I probably saw her less than a dozen times. In all those encounters, the number of words that passed between us wouldn’t add up to a single conversation.  They way we came into each other’s lives was that, depending on who you ask, I was either friends with or dating a woman who (depending on who you ask) was either Lori’s ex-girlfriend or current girlfriend.

Lori Blue first came to my attention when I was flirting with a customer at the video store where I worked.  I couldn’t tell if she was gay, straight or bi, single or taken. When she paid by check, I told myself that unless I saw someone else’s name on her checking account, it was game on. Then she handled me the check and there it was in black ink, Lori’s legal name just below hers. Both names were meaningless to me at the time and I had no reason to believe either would have any meaning for me in the future.

We’ll call the woman in question, Carolina, because that’s the fake name she used when she called me at the office so that none of our co-workers (who already knew we were seeing each other) would get suspicious. You see, I got a second job at a very conservative suburban company. One day I saw Carolina in the break room. I took one look at her in her button down blouse and skirt and she looked at me in my white shirt and tie and… it was kinda like that scene in “Fight Club” where Jack and Marla see each other in the support group. We were two South City kids with fake corporate identities who’d fooled everyone else in the office, but we recognized each other instantly.

Carolina and I became friends. When she and Lori broke up, I helped her move out of their apartment. I was hanging out a Carolina’s new place one night when Lori showed up unexpectedly and Carolina begged me to sneak out the back door. It was like that scene in “No Way Out,” which is the last time I will ever compare myself to Kevin Costner. I reserve the right to compare Lori to Gene Hackman, though.

Carolina told Lori about me and from then on, whenever any of Lori’s belongings came up lost or missing from Carolina’s apartment, Lori would accuse me, this guy she’d never met, of having stolen them. At this point, you’re probably wondering why Lori’s belongings would be in Carolina’s new apartment, an apartment they never shared, after they’d broken up. At this point, I’m wondering if you’ve ever met any lesbians.

At the time, Lori was the drummer for a band called Soul Kiss. Carolina asked me to go with her to a Soul Kiss show at the Link’s Club. I steeled myself to be formally introduced to the infamous Lori Blue. It only occurred to me after we’d arrived that perhaps there would be no introduction. Lori had never seen me and had no idea what I looked like. In a moment of clairvoyance, I realized that Carolina might:  A.) Have no interest in telling Lori who I was and B.) Might have designs on going home with Lori and only brought me along as a backup in case Lori already had a date. I decided then and there that if Carolina introduced me and Lori, not matter how tense things got, I would stay until the end of the set under the assumption that Carolina and I would be leaving together. If Carolina didn’t introduce us, I would assume it meant I was leaving alone and would do so sooner rather than later. Carolina and I were sitting at the bar before the show when Lori approached us. They started talking and when neither of them acknowledged my presence, I simply turned away, ordered a drink and pretended not to know them. There I was, Lori’s boogey man, right next to her and she had no idea who I was. I may have stayed for two and a half Soul Kiss songs that night. Monday morning at work, Carolina showed me her bruises and scratches. She and Lori had gotten into a fist fight outside the club after the show.

One night I was at the Way Out Club on open mic night with my two best friends (and future lovers) Angela and Zoe. I performed a poem called “June Bride,” which was inspired by my femme, bi, ex-fiancé leaving me for her butch, lesbian girlfriend. I hadn’t occurred to me at the time how much the situation between me, my ex-fiancé and her girlfriend as described in the poem, mirrored the situation between me, Carolina and Lori. I came off the stage to thunderous applause that often followed my Way Out Club performances and a short, blonde woman came to my table and extended her hand to me. It was not unheard of for a stranger to introduce themselves after I’d given a particularly good performance, so I thought nothing of shaking her hand until she said, “Hello, David. I’m Lori. Give Carolina my love.”

I put it together instantly. I hadn’t recognized Lori and she wouldn’t have recognized me. She was sitting in the Way Out Club, minding her own, when the host (Lianna Kopchak if memory serves) announced that the rival for her lover’s affections would be coming to the stage to recite a poem. Her ears had perked up and she listened with great interest, never imagining that the poem I would read would have any relevance to her at all. And what had I done? I’d read the poem in my repertoire that could most reasonably by misconstrued as having been written about her. She shook my hand and smiled and I just stared back, at a total loss for words. Angela said it was the only time she’d ever seen me speechless. Not to be outdone, Zoe confessed that she and Lori were former lovers.

One early Saturday morning, I went garage sale hopping with photographer Michael Draga and a couple of his models. I’m not a morning person, nor am I a garage sale person so I was asleep in the backseat of Draga’s car while they shopped. We were in a tony part of South City where the houses looked as mansion like as South City houses looked. At one point, I woke up and looked out the backseat passenger’s side window. The street was quiet and practically empty. I was still half asleep when I saw the door to one of the stately manors open and out walks Lori Blue. She was smiling and practically skipping down the walkway. We locked eyes for a moment but otherwise didn’t acknowledge each other. It was strange to see her outdoors, strange to see her happy and strange to see her so early in the morning coming out of such a nice house. It was made all the more strange because there were no witnesses. It was like that moment in the movie “Queen” when Helen Mirren sees the deer.

I saw Lori at the Way Out Club another time. I was hanging out with Zoe when Lori and another girl stumbled in. There was something about their entrance that sort of announced their presence the minute they walked through the door, not the least of which was the fact they had horribly made-up faces. It was the only time I’d seen Lori wearing make-up and it looked awful. Even though she was a woman, she looked like a drag queen. When you were a kid, did you ever try to draw a face with your eyes closed? Everything looked right, but the eyes were where the nose should be and the lips were outside the confines of the face. That’s how she looked. Later I found out that they were both tripping acid when they decided to give each other make-overs. Lori and her friend joined us at our table and there ended up being about half a dozen of us, hanging out and talking. If you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with someone in the middle of an acid trip, you can imagine how the night went. At one point, while others were talking amongst themselves, I looked up and saw Lori silently staring at me. She looked kind of angry, but she also looked suddenly sober, as if experiencing a moment of clarity. I said, “I never touched her.” And she seemed to understand. Aside from a drunken kiss at the Upstairs Lounge, nothing physical had ever happened between Carolina and I and I wanted Lori to know.

A couple years after meeting Carolina & Lori Blue, I was on a date with a girl named Lindsay. Lindsay and I were never a scorching romance. We were a casual, on again off again thing that evolved into a fairly meaningful, platonic friendship. At a time when I wasn’t quite sure what the heck we were, I took her to see a play at Washington University. She seemed preoccupied and as we were walking back to our cars, I asked her what was wrong. Standing in the parking lot, Lindsay (who had never before expressed any romantic interest in women) told me that she thought she was a lesbian and that she had fallen in love with a woman. With absolutely no evidence to support it, I had a premonition. You know that scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, when Charlie Sheen tells Jennifer Grey there’s someone she should meet, and she says “If you say the name Ferris Bueller, you lose a testicle.” Well, in the moment between telling me that she was in love with a woman and revealing who the woman was, I thought to myself, if she’s says the name Lori Blue, I will rip out one of her ovaries. Suffice it to say, cooler heads prevailed, and I’m happy to report that Lindsay, along with her wife, is now a mother of two.

I guess this is as good a time as any to confess that I was completely sprung on Carolina, who despite their many break-ups, never quite untangled her life from Lori’s. I’d heard through the grapevine that Carolina was leaving St. Louis to go to grad school. She would have left without saying goodbye had I not shown up unannounced on her doorstep in the middle of the night and confronted her a few days before she was to leave. I hardly ever saw her after that. I knew she made frequent visits to St. Louis, but I didn’t know when or where and it’s not like she ever called me. Then one year, I went to the gay pride parade. As a serial lesbian dater, I knew I would need to stay alert, less one of my ex-girlfriends or their current girlfriends take me by surprise. It occurred to me that this was the one day of the year that I could be reasonably sure that Carolina would be in town and what her whereabouts would be, and there I was at ground zero. Sure enough, walking from the parade to Tower Grove Park, I ran into Carolina and Lori. Lori didn’t say a word to me, but Carolina and I had a minute or two of pleasant small talk, followed by her offering me her new phone number, to which I said, “No. I fell in love with you and you completely fucked me up, so I don’t think I want your phone number, but it was nice to see you.” When I said that, it was the one and only time Lori looked at me with what I can honestly call sympathy. We may have been opposites (a white, lesbian woman and a straight, black man), we may have been rivals, but we were somehow bonded by our affection for the same rather inconvenient woman.

This would be that last time I saw Lori Blue alive.

It was Lindsay who called me, crying hysterically, to tell me that Lori had shot herself in the head and died. For reasons that I can’t really explain, I went to Lori’s funeral. For reasons that are even harder to explain, I cried my eyes out for this girl I hardly knew who didn’t care for me all that much. I didn’t speak to Carolina at the funeral. We saw her each other from across the room and she convulsed into tears and my heart broke for her.

Lori was buried in a blue casket.

Whenever one of my contemporaries dies, there needs to be two funerals; one for the family and one for the friends. The family funeral is usually to bury someone that I don’t actually recognize. The entire time that I knew the deceased usually gets just a sentence or two in the eulogy, “for a time, he fell in with the wrong crowd” or “we all know about her struggles with addiction.” Fittingly, there was an alternative memorial for Lori at The Way Out Club. I was sitting at a table alone and Sherri Danger asked if I would mind moving so that she could set that table aside to display pictures of Lori. To this I said, “Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve been asked to move aside for Lori Blue.” To which Carolina said, “And even though she’s dead, it probably won’t be the last.”