Em did a book signing of The Coming Out Stories for the regulars at the Gallows Lounge. Naturally, these fans hadn’t known that the silent pantomimist was also a fiction writer. And, like Mary Marinelli, most of the Two Dykes, One Who Talks fans hadn’t known that Nora’s nonspeaking partner actually didn’t speak in real life. When Em was signing her book at the Gallows, Nora and I had to explain this to them.

In the Reagan years, Nora and I would see a lot more of Em’s seagull thing—her arms spread like a seagull’s motionless wings. We knew this sometimes meant that Em was thinking about drifting back to Canada; yet her seagull thing was also Em’s way of pantomiming Ronald Reagan’s laissez-faire approach to the AIDS epidemic.

“Reagan isn’t laissez-faire or do-nothing about communism, but he seems content to let an epidemic run its course through the gay community,” the snowshoer had said.

The pretty English teacher was always reminding us of what Reagan said in his first inaugural—that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” A seagull’s seemingly directionless drifting was Em’s way of imitating Ronald Reagan as the Pontius Pilate of the AIDS epidemic. That went over all right at the Gallows. Reagan wasn’t as beloved in New York as he was in the rest of the country. There were the occasional angry walkouts when the onstage subject of Two Dykes, One Who Talks was the dearth of attention Reagan gave to AIDS. Nora just shrugged; she said the walkouts were from out of town.

There were only a few times when Em tried to pantomime excerpts from her short stories onstage at the Gallows. The lunatic dad’s letter to the pope did not go over well, not even in New York. There were more than a few walkouts when Em acted out the part about the three big vehicles hitting the pope, and someone threw a beer bottle at Nora when Nora merely mentioned the first of the two attempts to assassinate John Paul II.

“Okay, no more popes,” Nora agreed, when the craven management of the Gallows Lounge had complained that the Canadian was making fun of the pope.