The Christmas Pic

8. Jo

CHAPTER 8

JO

I wake up from a fitful sleep at five a.m., still processing the phone call with Max the night before. Unable to lull myself back into dreamland, I throw on my running shoes and jog through the quiet misty dawn to my favorite highway exit to sit and ponder. And, well, mope a bit.

I guess it’s weird, but my sanctuary is a stretch of off-ramp on the East side of town with a series of giant murals painted on it, depicting the origins of Harmony Springs, Michigan. When I was in third grade, the city council commissioned a renowned queer muralist from the West Coast to revive the drab blank wall. On the final day of painting, she invited all of the elementary school students to add their handprints to the border. I still remember dunking my hand in purple paint and applying it with purpose to the gritty cement facade. Not so different from the dopamine hit I get from taking a photograph, I suppose; that sticky silicone handprint captured a moment in time permanently. It was the first time I had truly made my mark somewhere. The very existence of this place is a sort of defiant, anachronistic miracle. When I’m in need of a bit of inspiration (okay, and some humbling), I go and sit on one of the benches by the tableaus and consider my miniscule part in that legacy of resilience.

I stare up at the founding members of Harmony Springs, trying to remind myself that people historically survived much tougher circumstances than a perturbingly hot and bitchy CEO swooping in to make over an admittedly floundering business.

In 1855, somewhere in Northern California, an orphaned teenage prospector named Silas Montgomery had sold his last earthly possession for one more chance to sift through the silt in search of gold. Legend has it that in the dwindling light of his final day, moments before the sun set on his dreams for good, Silas wandered off to relieve himself in the river and stumbled upon one of the largest gold nuggets anyone had ever seen. Excitedly digging around, he confirmed he was on an unprospected deposit. Silently, he took some gold and cleverly left the rest, telling no one. He feigned despair and told the other prospectors he was finished searching, urging them not to follow him as he was done for. He then caught a ride to San Francisco, assumed a new identity, safely deposited his gold and began the process of purchasing the land with the hidden treasure before anyone else could claim it.

Silas Montgomery became a very wealthy man. He subscribed to American ideals, like the cutthroat nature of doing business. He never looked back at his former comrades sifting silt in the riverbank, never gave them a second thought. He invested his money well, and was willing to turn a blind eye to the means by which his money grew.

He was purportedly so busy doing business that he forgot to marry until he was very old. Even so, he carried out his mission of marriage much like a business deal, finding the wealthiest bachelorette in San Francisco and promising her a child; an heir to his fortune. Matilda Montgomery went on to give birth to his only offspring when Silas was sixty-five, a son they named Bartholomew. She did not survive the birth, leaving the aging Silas a single father.

Bartholomew was different. He was finely clothed, well-mannered, and attended the most expensive Catholic boys’ school in the Bay Area, but there was something about him that the other children noticed, something he didn’t yet notice about himself. It made them wary of him. He felt like an imposter, handsome and well-heeled, yet rejected for some essence that he couldn’t fully grasp.

The one place where Bartholomew found respite was in choir. He sang in an angelic, lilting countertenor that fulfilled the conductor’s dreams of performing choral pieces that often required women’s voices. As the choir won competitions and he earned recognition from his peers, Bartholomew was allotted this one small pocket of acceptance during his schooldays. The other boys started calling him Harmony, as that was what the choir director would call out to pull his part into a rendition. The nickname stuck everywhere but at home.

In spite of Silas’ refusal to acknowledge his son’s talent or new moniker, Harmony Montgomery’s new name imbued him with an air of confidence, a quality that intensified as he matured. In tandem with his name change, Harmony’s deepest, most secretly held yearnings intensified as well. But he kept his sexuality hidden, knowing with certainty that his corrupt father would disown him if his son’s identity jeopardized his business dealings with bigoted criminal associates.

When he came of age, he defied his father’s wish that he focus on math and economics in order to attend USC’s Thornton School of Music instead. For all the years masking his identity as a gay man, the thing Harmony Montgomery was ultimately disowned for was his choice of undergraduate degree.

Thankfully, Harmony had real talent, and he was able to attend university on a full scholarship, bartending nights at LA’s first gay bar, Jimmy’s Backyard. The year was 1929, and Harmony had figured out his place in the world.

Of course, that optimism was abruptly cut short as the Great Depression swept across America. In place of the roaring twenties, with its underground speakeasies and jazz explosion, was the thirties: a world where every penny went toward survival, not entertainment. Harmony made it through his schooling, but he and his classmates were overwhelmingly unemployed upon graduating.

Without his father’s money to live on, Harmony took the advice of the migrant workers who passed through Jimmy’s Backyard and headed to Detroit to find employment in the auto industry. He worked on an assembly line where he was paired up with different partners each shift. One day, the foreman paired Harmony with Colin Merkowski, a ginger lad from South Carolina with a relentlessly sunny disposition. Harmony worked better with Colin than anyone he had ever been paired with, and the foreman, knowing a good thing when he saw it, paired them up permanently.

For a while, Harmony couldn’t tell if Colin liked him in a special way, or if he was the most charming and attentive individual on the planet. Turns out, it was a bit of both. They worked together on that line for two entire years before one night, drinking together on his fire escape, Harmony worked up the nerve to mention the place he had bartended during college. Colin, ever the active listener, wanted to hear every detail of Jimmy’s Backyard, this institution whose tips had gotten his best friend through school, and whose patrons had encouraged Harmony to move to Detroit in the first place. As he tried to encapsulate the cast of characters who populated the bar, Harmony struggled to be adequately evasive. After so many years of talking around the truth, he reached a moment where he stared deep into Colin’s eyes. He knew that no matter what, Colin was going to be okay with the truth .

Of course, Colin’s reaction was better than okay. He flushed a deep crimson that blotted out all of his darling freckles, and declared that there was no use denying it any further, rejection be damned: he had feelings for Harmony and that was that. Harmony didn’t wait another second to embrace Colin, and they shared their first kiss under the smoggy Detroit stars.

For the next year, they lived together in Harmony’s apartment as ‘roommates’ to the outside world. To their small queer circle, their full relationship was known, but otherwise they lived in fear of being outed, losing their precious jobs, or at worst, facing fatal violence. In spite of their shroud of secrecy, they thrived as partners, with Colin encouraging Harmony to revisit his passion for singing, and Harmony editing the opinion pieces Colin published in grassroots queer publications.

On his estranged father’s ninety-fifth birthday, Harmony sent Silas a photograph of himself and Colin with an update scrawled on the back. He didn’t want to hide from his only living relative anymore, and there was no worse thing that could happen than his father continuing to cut him off.

For eleven months, Harmony heard nothing from Silas. But then, one blustery early December morning, a letter arrived with familiar handwriting. It was from his father, but atop the parchment was a notice: to be delivered to my son in the event of my passing. Silas Montgomery had died. This was a shock, to be sure, but the contents of the letter were all the more shocking.

My dear son,

It is with a heavy heart that I pen these words, words which I cannot bear to deliver face to face, and which you shall read when I have departed this earthly realm. I confess now, through this letter, the sins of a lifetime, for I have failed you as a father. I was consumed by a self-loathing so profound that, by the time of your birth, the capacity to love had long escaped me. Your innate purity, your zeal for song, your relentless curiosity, and your very essence were more than I could endure, having myself been ensnared by a life of avarice and ruthless ambition.

The tragic irony of seeing you now, content in the company of another man, could very well shatter one’s sanity. You know so little of who I truly am. I implore you, burn this missive, lest my failings taint what little remains of my legacy.

Yet, should you come to understand me in this final confession, consider it the scant penance I can offer for the damage I have wrought. I might have lived as freely as you do now, had cowardice not held me in its grip. Heed my warning: do not barter your true self for the hollow allure of acceptance.

In the twilight of my years, I recognize that the approval I so desperately sought from those unworthy of it holds no value as I face death in solitude, unacquainted with genuine romantic affection. I leave you my estate, not as a testament to my affection, but as a burden you must bear wisely. You are undoubtedly a better man than I ever was, but beware the corrupting lure of wealth, a temptation understood only when confronted directly.

With deep regret,

Your father,

Silas Montgomery

At twenty-seven years old, Harmony Montgomery found out his father was gay and became a multi-millionaire at the same time. In the ensuing weeks, he and Colin debated what they should do with the money. They had lived in the roughest of circumstances for so many years, and while they aimed to improve their quality of life with the influx of cash, they were also closely embedded with their fellow queer community members, the majority of whom were struggling to make ends meet.

On Christmas Eve that year, Harmony and Colin gathered their friends in their cramped Detroit apartment. Together, they celebrated the fact that, even with nothing, they had all that they needed in the company of one another, their chosen family.

As the evening wound down, with their guests huddled around the fireplace, Harmony unveiled his visionary project: he had acquired ten thousand acres of undeveloped farmland in southern Michigan to establish a town. This new community, Harmony Springs, would be a sanctuary for queer individuals, artists, and free spirits alike. He intended to allocate the bulk of his inheritance to a trust designed to support the town, calling on his community to elect a board of ten members who would manage the funds and advocate for the town’s brand new residents.

The Christmas origins of the town’s foundation became the scaffolding of Harmony Springs’ lore. A place where Christmas was for everybody, at any time, and the idea of holiday spirit as a fleeting thing that visited people in December was waved away as preposterous. From its founding to the present day, many of Harmony Springs' residents had missed out on holidays due to rejection or estrangement from the families that raised them. So, as Harmony and his board saw it, there was much festive time to make up for. To this day, while Harmony Springs dazzles extravagantly at Christmastime, the essence of the season–with a distinctively queer flair–permeates the town all year.

Harmony and Colin lived into their late nineties, with Harmony passing away in 2006. They never stopped advocating for the overlooked and the underserved, and their passion and fortitude paved the way for Harmony Springs to be a pioneering township for statutes on gay marriage, Pride month, drag performing, and trans inclusivity.

Of course, just because a place is founded on queer ideals doesn’t mean everyone who lives there is queer. But allyship was the norm growing up in a place like this, which my parents always impressed upon me as a privilege that was not a given in other towns. Because of that privilege, I feel certain I had an easier time coming out than the majority of other lesbians around the world. I was fifteen, but I had known that part of me for years and no one had ever made being gay seem weird or uncool. So many of my local friends’ parents and relatives were queer that coming out was almost passé or redundant in Harmony Springs. If anything, it was the straight kids that felt the need to come out.

Sitting on the bench beneath the mural of Harmony and Colin on their wedding day in the town square, watching the sun rise over the freeway, I harness calm for a fleeting moment. I’m resilient. I’m unafraid of challenges. I can handle an egotistical business mogul and figure out a way to get something productive out of this mess of an arrangement. All I need is a vat of bean juice to boot up my kickass mode.