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MUUMUU FUN FACT #1:
Protestant missionaries first introduced the garment to Hawaiian women more than a century ago as a body-covering alternative to wearing grass skirts and showing their fofties everywhere!

MUUMUU FUN FACT #2:
Drummer Jon Fishman of the scroungy rock band Phish has been known to wear one while performing, because it doesn’t restrict his movement!

MUUMUU FUN FACT #3:
The word “muumuu” stems from the Hawaiian word “mu’umu’u” which means “amputated”!

MUUMUU FUN FACT #4:
“Muumuu” makes for a great word when you’re stuck with all four “u” tiles in Scrabble! (“Tumultuous,” too, but how likely is that?)

W
hen I say I get a lot of nice things said to me on the street, it’s mostly from gay guys.

I still don’t know a lot about homosexuals. And certain things about homosexuals I don’t want to know. [
That’s weird, because they’re dying to hear about your sex life
.] But I’ve found they’re such great people in a lot of ways. So many of them are delightful, they’re very compassionate, and their sense of humor is fantastic. They’re very creative, the gays. They’re writers, artists, wonderful makeup artists, wonderful designers. [
I hear one time there was a gay attorney!
] Most of them make a damn good living and are really smart.

People are people, I say.

Now, at first, when we moved to Los Angeles, I have to admit I was surprised at how many were around. Kathy would have a party, say, and there’d be all these cute guys who were so adorable and funny, and I’d have such a good time talking to them about movies, show business, Judy Garland, whatever. [
Mostly Judy Garland
.]

I’d run over to my daughter and say, “Oh, Kathy, I just met this guy and he’s so cute! Why don’t you put the make on him?” [
Is that like taking a hit out on someone?
]

And she’d say, “Ma, he’s gay.”

“What?”

“He’s gay.”

Well, I just didn’t know it! I couldn’t tell, honest! I would just be laughing and talking with a guy and never catch on. [
Really, Mom? The quoting of lines from
The Wizard of Oz
didn’t set off any bells?
] I don’t know how many times I’ve had the “Ma, he’s gay” conversation with Kathy. It seemed as if every cute guy at her parties was gay. Then again, the condo that my husband, Johnny, and I lived in in West Hollywood turned out to be half straight, half gay. We had these two fellas across the hall from us who were simply delightful, Randy and Steve. [
Can you still say “fellas,” or is that considered un-PC?
] Very smart guys, one worked for the World Bank for years, and the other did something at UCLA. [
Hair?
] A teacher, I think he was. [
Oh
.] Anyway, one day I was talking to Randy, and I mentioned that I didn’t think I’d ever known a gay guy until I’d moved out to California.

“Maggie,” he said to me, “you knew them. You just didn’t know they were gay.”

And that was surely the truth! In our day it was this silent thing, and it had to have been awful for them. I always thought certain guys were just effeminate, or—God help me, this is the word we used then—sissies. [
Oh shit, here we go
.] And I just never got beyond that. I never knew what we’re finding out now, that you’re actually born gay. I thought you wanted to be gay. Really, that’s what our generation thought. There was one kid I remember from high school—Jim [
I guarantee you, now it’s James
] I’ll call him since I don’t really recall his name—who I’d pass by occasionally, and he’d have makeup on. [
Maggie’s first drag queen!
]

I’d say, “Hi, Jim, how you doing?”

“Pretty good, Marge,” he’d say.

Maybe I’d say, “Are you playing ball tonight?” [
Oh yeah, just not the kind you’re thinking of, Marge
.] But that was really it. I’d wonder why he was wearing makeup, but I honestly didn’t know then that gays sometimes wore it. Later, after I was married, there was a fella that Johnny worked with that people thought might have been gay. He was good-looking, a darling guy, and he came to all the parties. And I remember later, he would bring a guy to some of our parties, and this guy he brought was very, very out. He might have described him as a “buddy” or a “friend.” But he was so cute, I’d always ask if he’d found a girlfriend. I’ll be honest, I was very dumb about gays then.

Better-Looking Than All the Girls

KATHY:
Mom, let me ask you something. When I was “dating” Tom Murphy in high school, who is now out and proud and has a nice boyfriend, did you ever think Tom was gay?

MAGGIE:
Never. As God is my judge. All I knew was, I always thought he was so cute. Remember when you guys were in that
Babes at Sea
with all the sailors?

K:
Dames at Sea,
Mom. So the fact that I was in a musical called
Dames at Sea
with my boyfriend, who wore a sailor’s suit, and who was better-looking than I was, wasn’t a red flag?

M:
I tell ya, he was better-looking than all the girls in the cast! I said to your dad, “I hate to say this, but Tom’s better-looking than any girl onstage!”

K:
“Better-looking than all the girls.” You didn’t associate that with being gay?

M:
Never.

K:
Didn’t your generation have the term “confirmed bachelor”? When you saw someone who was good-looking, in good shape, and hadn’t married, what did you think?

M:
That he hadn’t found the right woman, or just didn’t want to be married.

K:
Well, both of those things could be true. What about in the movies of your day, Mom? There was always a flamboyant sidekick in those thirties movies.

M:
Well, we loved those characters. They were very funny. Like, I always heard Noël Coward was gay.

K:
What?? Noël Coward was gay?

M:
Ha ha, Kathy. But you see, he was so great, who cared? I didn’t. All I knew was, he was funny as hell.

K:
Did you ever hear that songwriter Cole Porter was gay?

M:
Now see, I was shocked by that when I eventually found out, because he had a wife. He had . . . what do you call them? Ringers?

K:
Ringers? You mean like a cock ring?

M:
No! No, no, no. A somebody, a companion . . .

K:
A beard?

M:
Yes, a beard.

K:
How did it go from “beard” to “ringer”? Mom, if you went into a gay sex shop and said, “Give me a ringer,” believe me, they’re not going to give you a single woman.

M:
Anyway, as I said, we never really knew what “gay” meant. We certainly didn’t think it meant they would want to marry other men . . .

K:
Or flip houses in Palm Springs. So somehow, in your generation, it went from calling them “sissies,” pointing and laughing in church, to hoping to God that if you buy a home, it’s from a gay man. Because you wouldn’t want to buy a house from a straight person, would you?

M:
No. There’s been a tremendous change.

As you can guess, it was really through Kathy that I got educated about gays, and only after we moved to Los Angeles from Chicago. I remember when she was performing at the Groundlings in the eighties and she’d tell me about doing a walk for AIDS. “Ma, you’ve got to donate something,” she’d tell me.

“All right, I’ll give you ten bucks,” I said.

“Ten bucks! I need more than that,” she said.

I gave her $25, which she was more satisfied with, but as I got to know some gays through Kathy, it became clear how much more needed to be done. It became very easy to contribute whenever I could, especially as Kathy started to do more benefits for their causes.

I’ve Never Seen Costumes Like That in My Life

KATHY:
Okay, Mom, hold it. I want to give you some props here when it comes to gay awareness. Remember when I was in my twenties, and we were living in that Santa Monica apartment, and you came home once and said, “Dad and I stumbled upon the greatest thing.”

MAGGIE:
Oh yes. The Halloween parade on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood.

K:
Yes! You said, “There were all these guys . . .” and I knew you meant “gay people.”

M:
Right. I said I’d never seen costumes like that in my life! They were doing skits and everything.

K:
You said some were dressed as cheerleaders, and one guy was running around as Joan Crawford yelling, “No more wire hangers EVER!”

M:
Of course. Johnny and I picked out a café and sat there all night and watched the show. It was very enjoyable. I had never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been to a lot of parades. We realized it was their way of showing they were glad to be out. Of course, they could get a little outrageous about it. A little in your face. There was always somebody as a nun.

K:
Always a Baby Jane. Always a Cher.

M:
If not Judy, there’d be a Liza. The leather stuff I wasn’t keen on.

K:
It’s not like you haven’t seen gay guys in assless chaps, Mom. Because you have. Certainly a different scene from the Fourth of July parades in Forest Park, Illinois. Let’s face it, Mom, you actually exposed me to gay pride parades.

M:
And then we went a lot after we moved to West Hollywood.

K:
You lived three blocks from it.

M:
We wanted to support it. Of course, after a while it got pretty crowded and raucous. It became harder to get a good seat, because they’d be taken up so early. But for a long time we went every year.

K:
You and Dad went to gay bars, too. I mean, that was the neighborhood.

M:
A great bar is a great bar. We’d go to any bar.

K:
And your favorite was . . .

M:
Rage.

K:
Okay, now you see a bar called Rage, and what do you think the name signifies?

M:
It could be “We’ve got a rage for this bar!” I never really gave it a lot of thought.

K:
Were you regulars at the Mother Lode?

M:
I don’t think so. But you know the funniest thing Johnny and I ever did? We did it so innocently. We were looking for a book, and so we went to that one bookstore . . .

K:
No!! Circus of Books?!?!?

M:
When I think about that, oh my God . . .

K:
Okay, now I don’t need to explain Circus of Books for my gays, but for everyone else, it’s so obviously a gay porn bookstore, from the neon sign to the mass of gay hustlers just standing around outside in tight jeans and smoking cigarettes. Mom, what were you thinking when you saw the male hustlers outside?

M:
We didn’t know they were hustlers. We just thought they were guys hanging around. But then we were hardly in the door and every book was nudes and poses and all that stuff. They were poses I’d never seen before and never want to see again.

K:
Guys in missionary positions?

M:
Don’t say “missionary,” Kathy. You’re offending my religion.

K:
Sorry, I didn’t know I was going too far while you were in a
gay porn bookstore
.

M:
Anyway, we did laugh about it. Johnny and I just looked at each other and thought, “We’re not gonna find
The Catcher in the
Rye
here.”

K:
Well, a different kind of catcher and a different kind of rye. Mom, what did the guy behind the register do when he saw you and Dad come in?

M:
He kind of looked like, “What are they doing here?” We actually laughed about it.

K:
Do you think he thought you wanted to swing?

M:
Probably.

K:
Were you each other’s ringers?

M:
Maybe so!

K:
So he was probably disappointed that he lost your business.

M:
Oh God, so after we were laughing, we thought, “Uh-oh, what if, as we’re walking out, our friends drive by and see us?” They’d wonder what in the world Margie and John are doing!

K:
Whoa, whoa, stop for one second. In a million years, what were the chances that the remaining friends of yours that were even living were going to drive down Santa Monica Boulevard past Circus of Books with its throngs of male prostitutes, on the way to church, and say, “Hey, there’s John and Maggie Griffin!”?

M:
Kathy, it could have happened. Anyway, we’ve been to other gay bookstores. Another neighbor we had, John Morgan Wilson, had a book coming out, and we went to a reading he gave at another one . . .

K:
A Different Light?

M:
That might have been it. Anyway, that was really nice. Swellest guy you’d ever want to know.

K:
Don’t swear, Mom. “Swellest guy.” If that’s not gay, I don’t know what is.

As I got to know more gays, I got to see how different many of them are. If you watch Kathy’s show, you might remember the contest she held in which the prize was for someone to come live at Kathy’s house with her for a weekend. He’d get to see her perform, get wined and dined and shown Hollywood, and be treated like an honored guest. Now, the gays I’d gotten to know were pretty savvy about everything Hollywood. Some of them were so up-to-date with what’s going on, they’d know more gossip than Kathy did! That’s pretty hard to imagine. But at the very least, gays know about people like Bette Davis and all the old stars, but they also know the real young hot new stars! Even a gay who lives in Peoria!

Well, this one young gay who won the contest was from Cleveland, and it was funny, he didn’t know anything about Hollywood! He literally knew nothing about that kind of lively gay style, or gay anything. I think it was very frustrating for Kathy. So I said, “All I know is the difference between a Cleveland gay and a California gay? Worlds apart!”

No one can say all gays are the same, I guess!