Marland Monday: We Can’t Go Back.
It’s the first Monday of June! Also, I had a big birthday yesterday let’s just say I turned a word that rhymes with nifty. But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty and celebrate…
Marland Monday!
Every Monday I celebrate Douglas Marland, one of the GOATS of soap operas. This week I won’t be focusing on any show Mr. Marland wrote. I’m focusing on Mr. Marland himself. It’s not going to be easy. Read on.
June is Pride Month. It used to be local in the Bay Area, but now everyone seems to celebrate Pride. This delights this cis woman’s heart; people celebrate who they are. Yet there are people who aren’t happy about this. Many misguided parents’ groups want to restrict reading and reading certain books, books as Gender Queer by Maia Koabe, Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, and Beyond Magenta written and photographed by Susan Kuklin.
I keep thinking of Douglas Marland. Why? Because he was gay.
I always had a feeling he was. I grew up in the Bay Area. Okay, it was the suburbs where there was only one art film theater in my county. But hop on BART, and in forty-five minutes one could be in the Castro. Where men could hold their boyfriend’s hand, or women could kiss another woman. They could bicker about what movie to see at the Castro or where to eat. They could be themselves. They didn’t have to pretend they were someone who they weren’t.
Yet in 1985, a young man named Timothy Lee was found dead, hanging from a tree at Concord BART, right near where I lived. He was a student studying fashion design. He stayed out late and then slept past his stop. Back then, Concord was the last stop of the line. It was midnight on a Friday; no service until six. Lee called several people but couldn’t get anyone to help him. The next morning, he was found hanging from a tree. Timothy was black and gay.
Police said it was a suicide. He left a note. As of 1995, they still said this. Yet the note that he supposedly left the handwriting didn’t look like his, and the names of relatives were misspelled. How he told friends he was offered a chance to study in Italy. Timothy Lee still haunts me. I always thought of my hometown (and the surrounding towns) as Mayberry, a sitcom town. In a sitcom town, black gay men aren’t found hanging from a tree. But even in the eighties, people had to hide who they were.
I’ve often wondered about Mr. Marland when he was growing up in New York state. Back then he was Marland Messner, active in high school plays. He continued to act and moved to New York, then toured with Mister Roberts.Did he know he was gay in high school? Did he feel alone? I know he was close to his mother Bea; could he tell her what was going on?
The years went on, and he became a writer. On Loving, he wrote a storyline about Noreen Donovan (Marilyn McIntyre) who worked in an AIDS ward. I’ve tried to find footage or articles about this storyline, but haven’t found anything. What I do know was he was one of the first writers to write about AIDS on television. Was it his way of confronting what was happening? I am betting by then he had friends who had died. Was the ward modeled on San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 5B, where so many men died? Did they show patients or was it Noreen just talking about them? God, I wish I knew; the character of Noreen was written out after one year.
In As the World Turns, he introduced Hank Elliot. I’m going to write more about Hank next week. But yet again he wrote about AIDS. Hank’s boyfriend Charles had it, and the two were separated by Charles’ family. Because they weren’t married, they didn’t have any legal recourse. This scares me: that somehow things will be reversed and gays won’t be able to marry. I know it doesn’t affect me. I am a proud spinster. It would affect friends of mine. It would affect so many families.
I do get why Mr. Marland couldn’t come out publicly. Of course, it might’ve been the simple reason he wanted to keep his private life private. He also worked for a corporation that was very conservative and fired an actor for becoming sick. He did the next best thing and wrote about what gays were fighting for/against. They wanted better treatment. They wanted equality. They wanted simply to love. They wanted to live.
I wish he could’ve lived ten, twenty years longer to see the world change. I wish he wrote something else to tell us who he was, something left behind. I hate guessing about his life, I want to know more. But this is what I do know: We can’t go back to the way it was. Books are not grooming children to become gay. Teachers are not recruiting children to be gay. The fact I even have to write this in 2022 is infuriating.
Here’s what else I know: I believe in Heaven. I believe by now Mr. Marland and Timothy Lee have met. They’re doing a big musical show, modeled after Busby Berkeley. Lisa Brown is in it, along with Christopher Bernau, Amanda Blake, Keith Christopher, Jeffrey Mylett, Gene Anthony Ray. and countless others. Emile Ardolino is directing. Howard Ashman is writing the score. Timothy is designing the costumes. Gia Carangi is his model. I need to believe in this because life can be too much sometimes. I want to believe that somewhere there is a place where people finally can be who they are.
Tune in next week.
