Mark R. Miller

The photograph is of my great-aunt who died two decades before I was born. She is holding her not yet four year old son. It was taken by her lover, Lucia Larranga. It is, all at once, triumph and love and dignity.

Einnim was named after (you will not see this coming) her mother Minnie by spelling the name backwards. I had suggested this tactic to my wife Kiki who violently opposed the idea of children named Kram and Ikik. Yet she is considered to be *fun* at parties and people *like* her.

By 22 (1917) she had met Lucia Larranga who was ten years older. She fell harder than an inebriated first-time snowboarder. They wanted a child...badly. There was no reciprocal in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. After what must have been unimaginably agonizing

deliberations, they decided Leslie must marry a <shudder> man. They settled on Kenneth Moore, a friend and junior army officer getting ready to go fight WWI in France. Leslie laid out the deal: They would marry and once she was pregnant they would divorce. And that’s exactly what

On the same passenger manifest is Lucia Larranga. And do you know what they brought back from Hawaii six months later? Not macadamias in shitty chocolate for their friends. No. They brought back Louise Taylor. From Hawaii. And now they were three. If the word throuple pops into

your head, please stop reading this thread right now. You are banished. So Leslie and Lucia and Louise raised little Bobby. The makers of the L-word owe them a credit. Leslie and Lucia living together on the 1920 Census, then with Louise on the 1930 Census and 1940 Census

I never met any of them. I knew Bobby as an older man when I was young. He would come to our house for dinner dressed in a suit with gold tie-pin and cuff-links and, invariably, tennis shoes. Those three women raised him. They sent him to Stanford. He drew cartoons for

the New Yorker. He played piano. He never worked. He never married He was gay. He was lovely and eccentric and accepted every invitation and showed up slightly less than rarely. “Bit of a sniffle coming on.” He would go to the Balboa Cafe in SF at night and play for hours.

When he was done he took his over-flowing tip jar and gave it to the wait staff. After he had a stroke he was unable to talk but he wrote letters. Beautiful letters with drawing and a hundred cross outs from where his brain kept supplying the wrong word. After several years he

went back to the Balboa Cafe. His hair had gone all white overnight; he didn’t get it cut. He grew a beard. The staff had turned over. The piano was covered in potted plants and pushed to the corner. He sat down at a table. The manager came over and told him that homeless people

Deleted scene: Bobby Moore knew an endless variety of songs. He had a vast mental library of them. They were tunes from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Leslie, Lucia and Louise must have played music constantly. For the simple reason that I was self-centered and lacking in

foresight, I never asked him about that. But the genius thing about this was something I thought was borderline insane as a kid. He would start singing snippets of lyrics in the middle of his sentences.

He might begin saying: “Oh yes I was very fond of your Aunt Marian,”then sing: If I didn’t care. More than words can say., then back to speaking. I can recall first become conscious of this and glancing furtively around the dining room table at my parents and siblings

but no one seemed alarmed. (I am number 9 out of 10 children). They all just carried on eating and speaking. After some time I became as nonchalant to this incredible mannerism as the rest. When I was in 7th grade, he asked me before dinner one night:

“Do you have someone special at school?” I must have instantly become fascinated by the relationship of my shoes to the carpet as I quietly related that there was a girl in 8th grade that I secretly adored.

He lifting his drink and sang So here’s to you Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know, oh, oh, oh.”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I certainly didn’t know the song. Only much later did I comprehend.