Fiction is funnier
than truth
A Portland author novelizes
the recent traumatic past
by
a m em oi
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into the distance as you dine on Northwest
Portland
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E n j o y S u n d a y b r u n c h , d aily l u n c h o r d i n n e r o n th e
P o r t l a n d S p i r i t . C o m m i t m e n t C e r e m o n i e s a v a ila b le .
t’s an odd sensation, reading a fictional
account of an era you’ve lived through. So it
was with a certain amount of trepidation
that I opened Queer Comers, the latest offer­
ing from part-time Portlander Donald Olson,
the author of four previous novels and a num­
ber of stage plays.
Set in the early 1990s, the novel chronicles
a conservative-Christian-hacked, anti-gay
ballot initiative and its impact on an eclectic
group of neighbors who live in Portlands West
Hills, in an enclave known affectionately as
Queer Comers.
I was prepared for something dark and
somber, something appropriate to the subject
matter. But that was not the case. While
humor would he the last treatment to pop into
my mind when recalling the horror inflicted on
this state’s queer community by the Oregon
Citizens Alliance, if I were pressed to describe
Olson’s novel in one word, it would be funny.
“It was a lesson in homophobia,” Olson
says, sipping a glass of chardonnay and remem­
bering the dark days of 1992 and 1994— and
ballot measures 9 and 13, respectively. “As furi­
ous as I was, how could you not see the absur­
dity and find it, on some level, absolutely hys­
terical?”
As the novel opens, the neighbors congre­
gate to bid farewell to Delmont Percy, the
neighborhood’s “gaytriarch,” a moneyed, cul­
tured gentleman who dies of congestive heart
failure and leaves empty “the choicest house in
Queer Comers,” as Olson describes it, one with
“a certain historical cachet—as well as half an
acre of gardens and a fabulous view of Port­
land.”
Although Percy never actually appears in
Queer Comers, he is a presence throughout,
P atrick C ollins
remembered as “that indefatigable homostxrial-
izer.” It is the ghost of Delmont Percy and rec­
ollections of the society he built in Queer Cor­
ners— the Faberge Easter egg hunt, for exam­
ple, and the annual Rose Festival barbecue—
that create the ambiance in which the story
unfolds.
The residents of the neighborhood are a
colorful lot, including Susan, a stiff-lipped Brit,
and her earthy lover, Carolyn, who are caught
up in the chaos of breeding their prize dog,
Lady Caroline. During the process, Carolyn
discovers her inner goddess, and Susan is sum­
moned to the other side of the Atlantic by her
ailing— and manipulative— mother.
Terry Terwilliger, an obscenely wealthy and
closeted malcontent prone to mink coats and
face lifts, lives nearby and acquires a rough-
trade house boy on one of his jaunts to Palm
Springs. Ito, the locally famous designer of gar­
dens, harmonizes with the universe. Cassandra,
a tattooed, sexy young bisexual who lives and
paints in Terwilliger’s carriage house, falls for
the dark and handsome Jay Zucker, owner of
Chez Jay. Little does she know that Jay— well-
known throughout the Rose City as the con­
summate lover— is having a difficult time
sprouting an erection.
Meanwhile down the block, Peter Love,
“Portland’s only black interior designer,” and
his partner— the hunky, athletic, excruciatingly
politically correct John-Don— are having a tew
problems of their own. It seems that John-Don
is, to put it politely, sexually uptight. He insists
on condoms at all times, even on dildos.
And there is Wellfleet Stipple, a choir
director caught in the quagmire of trying to
convince his fundamentalist Christian student
to sing not for God but for herself.
Then Sissy Parker—a lesbian realtor, long­
time member of the Million Dollar Club— sells
Delmont s house to Ron La bonne and his
bride, a Tammy Faye-esque televangelist named
Comette. Before long, Labonne is revealed as
the founding father of the American Christian
Alliance, and the author of Measure Three,
“the Non-Special Rights and Child Molesta­
tion Protection Act.”
A few pages later all hell breaks loose.
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