August
910 Baylor is one of the many places Janis Joplin is said to have lived, or slept, or maybe just passed out, in Austin. I lived there for a magical while with August Rothe, maybe the most beautiful gay man I’ve ever known, a guy who could change the oil on your car or bend a wig to his will with a can of Aquanet or whip up a coconut cream pie with the most perfect meringue you’ve ever seen.
I don’t know if the same house still perches up above where the original Whole Foods sat at 9th and North Lamar and I guess I don’t really want to know. I can’t imagine it’s still there. The house and yard took up quite a bit of prime real estate, not to mention the view. I slept in a bay window seat, looking east. I saw some beautiful sunrises and moonrises behind the Capitol. It was pretty special.
August would wake up in the morning, not early, mind you, shuffle into the kitchen in his bathrobe and slippers, and turn on the coffee maker. Once his coffee cup was in hand, he’d sit and ask, rhetorically “Well, what goes with coffee?” (BEAT)
“Cigarettes!!!” and he’d scream with laughter and light up a Marlboro Light.
And then we’d watch I Love Lucy reruns on the little black-and-white TV that I had won. I had stopped at a little mom and pop hamburger stand on one of my drives back from Georgia and they asked me to fill out a form for a drawing for a TV. So I did. A month or so later, a man whose accent sounded exactly like my Uncle Rex—South Georgia has a very definite, soft accent—called to say I’d won the TV. Well, I’ll be danged. I hadn’t won anything since that bike at the school raffle that Daddy said I didn’t need and gave back to the school. Not that I remember. Anyway. The guy at the hamburger place assured the TV worked real good. They knew that because they’d been watching it in the kitchen.
And that was our morning ritual. Coffee, cigarettes, and Lucy.
He wasn’t much for breakfast but he would occasionally make a coffee cake. Yes. And we would eat it right out of the oven. I actually don’t remember ever seeing him cook a regular meal there, but I don’t remember my doing much of that there either.
As Jaston Williams’ right hand man, August tried to keep him organized. Not easy. Make sense of the shoe boxes full of receipts at the bottom of the closet come tax time. Look for receipts missing from the shoe boxes in drawers, pants pockets, the floor of the car, you get the drift. August was the guy who back in the day—summer of 1981— typed up the original script of Greater Tuna on his Selectric typewriter in between collapsing in screams of laughter. He then worked as a dresser for Greater Tuna and ripped Velcro like a hellion backstage to get those queens out of one drag costume into the next. Like I say, there wasn’t much August couldn’t do and he looked good and had fun doing it.
While I was living with August, I was doing a lot of driving back and forth to see a girlfriend in Atlanta, and more than once while I was in Atlanta, Mama would send one of her famous pound cakes and by the time I got back to Austin, it would be eaten. Gone. Not a slice to be found. Jaston and August said they didn’t want it to go bad. I have a feeling it had something to do with the munchies.
Those were the days of AIDS. Pre-cocktail. August was HIV-positive and had been for a while. Despite having no T-cells, he somehow forged on, with his smile and go-to attitude. He dressed Tuna right up until Tuna Christmas hit the scene, and the joke was that’s what killed him. Tuna Christmas was, I don’t know, Moby Dick long in its first iteration. A few too many costume changes. August had to retire, but you would never know there was anything wrong with him. He was not one to feel sorry for himself, and he didn’t want you to worry about him, either. He was fine.
August had made an Italian crème cake for my birthday every year for years. Just luscious. And just months before he died, he showed up at a surprise birthday party for me in April of 1992 with the very last Italian crème cake.
He spent his last days at Seton, assuring everyone he was going to be fine. The staff at the hospital could not believe the numbers of people who poured into his room, to check on him, to love him for being such a gorgeous source of love and laughter for us.
For years after that on the road with the CowPattys, I would order a slice of coconut creme pie, hoping to find one that held a candle to August's, until one day, in mid-bite, I believe this was at a diner in Fort Worth, the thought came to me that what I was looking for was not coconut creme pie, but August. I let that sink in a minute. And I put the fork down, pushed the plate away, and never ordered another piece of coconut creme pie.
There would never be a match for his pie and there would never be another August Rothe.
So here's to August. What a fabulous human being. And I do mean fabulous.
©2023 Joy Cunningham