In my life prior to Brokeback Mountain there was Jeb and Dash. It has been the story I have lived with for several years now, and one I want the world to know about.
In 1965 Ina Russell buried her beloved batchelor uncle. An excentric little man who lived in an ungodly cluttered apartment in Washington, DC's Adams-Morgan area. When his will was read, he left her his diary, and the fire proof cabinet it was stored in. What he left her was more than a book, it was a life unto itself.
Between 20 January 1912 and 14 August 1964, uncle had written ten of thousands of pages of his everyday existance. Begining with the weather, and ending with the time and temperature, this man told his life story in installments. She opened the books, looking for confirmation of what she already knew. Her uncle was a homosexual.
Inspite of the risk, this little man admitted in writing that he was attracted to men. He wrote of his painful search for a "kindred spirit" in the streets and parks of the nations capitol. He wrote of his sucesses, and more often his failures. He wrote of the theatrical performances and movies he saw, the trips to Europe, his adoration for Woodrow Wilson, the young man on the street car, the quest for booze in the days of prohibition, the friend who returned from Florida with "Marajuana cigarettes".
While residing at the YMCA on "G" Street, NW, he met the love of his life. One evening he knocked on a friends door and an unfamilar voice bade him come it, and it was all over. He fell, head over heels, in love with a young man from Tennessee who had just got off the train. Thus was born "Jeb and Dash".
It would be more than 20 years before his the words of the flustrated aspiring author would see the light of day. In the late 1980's, Ina Russell knew the time had come, and to the fire proof cabinet she went. She open those books and like film running thru the sprokets of a movie projector, a world opened up again. The pavement of Washington, D.C. receeded and the wildflowers bloomed. Men appeared in the street with hats and never took off their ties. Her uncle fell in loved, and in a few short months, had his heart broken into a million pieces.
He never recovered from it.
Dash, the fictional name his amour was given, was not one to settle down. He was more the social butterfly who came to view "Jeb" as a ball and chain. They would never have a secluded mountain top, or the deserted tropical island Jeb imagined for them. The did have an on going friendship that lasted until Jebs death some 30 years later. They had drunken parties, they had uncountable breakfasts, lunches and dinners, they had the crushing mob of people outside the gates of the White House on VJ day. There were dreams that would not die.
The diary, became his surrogate. It was who he told how his day went because no one was there to tell it to, because he would not let anyone else in. Maybe oneday, his Dash would return. He never did.
Eighteen months she labored with tiny hand writing about as legible as sanskit to a blind person. In the end she had two hundred pages that covered twenty-seven years. Beyond that, was the nothingness, the grieving plane, the story whose end she already knew. In a series of strokes, in a pittiful decline and burial in just outside the district line.
Her family was scandalized that she would publish "Jeb and Dash, Diary of a Gay Life, 1918-1945" (Faber and Faber, 1993). She went to Washington for a booksigning the next spring, her uncles only surviving sibbling stood in line and got his copy, and rush home to learn who his brother was.
I read the book and was moved by it. I wanted to know more, I wanted to know who these men were. I wanted to uncover their psyudeonyms, wanted to learn what had happened to the others, something Ina did not know when she published the book.
I did not know the real life Jeb had left his papers to his alma mater. The person who wrote the description of said papers for their website probably had not read Jeb and Dash, (or maybe they knew just what they were doing) and gave so many details about him I recognized him, sitting alone in my ungodly cluttered house in front of my desk top. It scared me to death. I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was looking. He has been there ever since. A little man in a coat and tie.
Two and a half years later, sitting in a Subway resturant in Boulder, Colorado, having read the diaries myself, trying to get some sense of what it all ment, I tell Ina Russell I felt she had redeamed her uncles life. She had took his story and made sense of it to the world, had changed the direction of my path and many others. She took that with the grain of salt I offered with it.
And me, I try to write in my journal every day. I try to take it to the next level. I make it my mission that Jeb and Dash, and all those men and women are not forgotten. I go on line an buy used copies of his book, and I give the to anyone and everyone I think will read it. If you'd like a copy, email me, I'll send you one.
