One day in May 1997, as I was mentally preparing to move to SF, I received a strange message:
“Hey, Mark. This is Matt. Greg was telling me about a news story he heard on the radio about some flaming homosexual from San Diego who was rampaging around the country killing people and who’s now apparently wreaking havoc in Philadelphia. Um, I was concerned that it actually might be you. So if it’s not you, give me a call. Otherwise, I’m going to call the police and tell them where to find you.”
Intrigued and alarmed, I turned on the news and instantly screamed to no one in particular, “Oh, I HATE that guy!”
Everyone in Hillcrest at the time had a Cunanan story. I used to see him at Flicks, which was basically a holding tank for Rich’s, the club next door where one might go to see a few hundred men writhing in a sea of spandex, Nair-ed flesh, crystal meth, and deep attitude. Although I usually steered clear of Rich’s (aka Bitches), Flicks still held a special place in my heart as the place where I used to watch “The Simpsons” on Thursday nights back when I didn’t own a TV.
One night in August of the previous year, David and I went to Mandarin House to have a civilized meal, sip a few (dozen) mai tais, compare our latest manicures, and—perhaps on a whim—stick the little umbrellas in our hair. David (aka Hilda) always tried to hide her yellowish-gray rat’s nest by twisting it into a severe Germanic bun that sat too high on her pinhead, but who the hell did she think she was fooling?
Suddenly, as David daintily toyed with his imperial shrimp and I suggestively sucked my asparagus chicken, we heard a commotion coming from the next booth. Even before I craned my swan-like neck to see who was loudly analyzing the ins and outs of rimming, I immediately recognized that blood-curdling laughter. (One of my favorite quotes about Cunanan went something like this: “If he was in the same restaurant as you, you would know it.”)
As I squinted behind my granny glasses, I saw Cunanan whooping it up with a similarly obnoxious, “moneyed” young man and two gymbots (appropriately attired for Rich’s in tit-hugging spandex) who seemed more interested in wolfing down free Chinese food than in contributing to the sparkling, butt-centered conversation.
At least one nearby straight couple had already asked to be re-seated, so the waiter politely requested that Cunanan keep his voice down. Cunanan threw a hissy fit: “How dare you, a lowly waiter, tell me, somebody important, to keep my voice down!” (Or something like that.) David’s eyes bugged out even more as I instinctively clutched my pearls and matching handbag. In spite of this confrontation, Cunanan happily paid for the meal with a flourish of his credit card.
Later that evening, David and I were at Flicks, coyly sipping our drinks (bourbon & 7, Cape Cod), when Cunanan and a considerably larger contingent of gymbots made their splashy entrance. As my face twisted into a sneer that can stop traffic, I spilled the dirt on Cunanan since David was a neophyte in terms of San Diego gossip. (As David put it, “Boy, for someone who hates this town as much as you do, you sure do know a lot of people.”) I’ve chosen to paraphrase my diatribe thusly:
“I HATE that asshole. Look at him, standing there in his designer sweatshirt (Polo or Hilfiger, not Versace), brandishing his credit card like a weapon to fend off questions about the source of his income. Those gymbots wouldn’t give him the time of day (if they knew how to tell time) otherwise.”
When the story broke (and then re-broke after Versace’s death), I chuckled to myself every time some professional Teleprompter-reader mispronounced Cunanan. What greater insult for a homicidal egomaniac than to have your name butchered after you’ve done some butchering of your own?
Clearly, the mainstream media botched the Cunanan story from the very beginning. But the gay press didn’t do much better. You know that it doesn’t take much to set me off about gay male body fascism, so you can imagine my reaction when I glanced at a friend’s Out magazine (I wouldn’t be caught dead with that rag in my possession) and encountered TWO references to Cunanan’s 38-inch waistline. The horror, the horror! No wonder he went crazy! Who could live like that? The reporter actually included this piece of crucial information while describing a crime scene, something along the lines of “among the items found was a pair of bloody Levi’s (size 38!).”
More generally, this whole sordid affair pointed to the difficulty of criticizing our own communities without resorting to a moralistic language. You know that I am the last person to raise a fuss about sex, prostitution, drugs, sugar daddies, etc. Much to my chagrin, then, I think I’m returning to an argument I made in my MA thesis about wealth and contested definitions of respectability. Whatever.
In any case, all the speculation about Cunanan’s returning to San Diego for Pride Weekend created such interest that the parade had its best attendance to date. Personally, the most poignant moment of Pride Weekend that year occurred when I saw a solitary man unofficially marching alongside the parade route and carrying a sign that read, “Remember Andrew Cunanan.” I heard that many people tried to dissuade him from bringing up this sore subject and source of embarrassment. As much as I despised Cunanan and everything he represented about gay culture, I must confess that I felt a little twinge of sadness. He was, after all, a “popular” member of our community who self-destructed and took five other people with him.
On a lighter note, the announcement of my imminent departure from San Diego in August was timed such that David came up with the following scenario: "Since you have an Italian-sounding last name (Cunanan's nom de bar was DaSilva) and you're supposedly moving to San Francisco (little did he know that my waist had been brazenly flirting with the number 38), why don't you throw yourself a farewell bash at California Cuisine and then make a cryptic statement about how people don't really know the real you?" Believe me, I gave it some thought, but I knew I couldn't afford it.
