Fran Eaton Age 70

How long has Fran Eaton known she was gay? "Since I was born! I can remember going to movies with little girls and putting my arm around ’em, you know, and trying to neck with them. In the movies! You know, never even thinking it was unusual! But, no, I always knew I was gay. It never crossed my mind to be anything else."

Fran would roughhouse with the little boys. And never wanted a doll. "Used to break my mother’s heart. What did I want for Christmas? Chaps. Guns. Soldiers. You know, all that neat stuff. And I got it every Christmas. But somebody always threw a doll in. One of my grandmothers was a fantastic seamstress, and she’d sew all these frou-frou little dresses and little lace things. I wouldn’t wear ’em. Well, I’d have to wear ’em to school because you couldn’t wear pants and all that to school then. But as long as I can remember, there was never a question in my mind. Everybody in my family knows. Forever. I’ve always taken my lovers home. We slept in the same bedroom, same bed; they never said, ‘Do you want this bed?’ It’s easier, you know, you don’t have to play games."

Born in Dallas in 1930, Fran was the oldest of three sisters. Her mother was certainly quirky. The kids would go off to school, and their mother would decide to move; they’d come home from school to find that all the contents of their house would have been moved to another location. Sometimes this would happen every few months. "There was nothing stable about my mother–ever," Fran said. "She was like a child." Fran’s father was an accountant by day and a jazz musician by night. Having been dragged along as a small child to many of his gigs, Fran reflects that jazz music was probably her church. She worshipped her father, even as she was scared to death of his temper.

Fran hated school. She got a job pulling stock at a dime store, and would go down to the gay bar a few blocks away for a beer. In 1946, at age 16, with her hair cut like a man, she ran away with some gay people she met there. She came back after a year of traveling with this rough crowd, and promptly was arrested while visiting a friend who was in jail for being a prostitute ... something about being an accessory to the crime. Her father finally put Fran in a Catholic school to "straighten her out." This was successful in only one sense of the word.

At age 22, Fran was involved with a woman whose family found out about it. "I thought they were going to have me quartered and drawn, and tarred and feathered." Fran decided that maybe she’d do best to leave town for a little while, and left for Chicago with "two queens, a small suitcase, and $63." Before she left, she went to see a psychiatrist about "that little problem with that young lady." He didn’t try to change her orientation, just suggested she find a career that would be long-lasting and enable her to support herself and another person.

So Fran decided to go into retail and became a clothing buyer for a department store. She enjoyed the travel, general acceptance in the industry, and, she admits, got a little spoiled from spending five or six million dollars of somebody else’s money. "Like, you know, ‘That looks good!’ ‘Write that up!’ ‘Buy that!’ I did well."

Fran had a lover for 12 years, then another for 10, while in Chicago. Then Fran had an assistant, Barbara, in Chicago whom she liked, but who left and went to Houston. They’d run into each other in different cities on retail business, have dinner, and that was about it. "Then in about 1973, I ran into her in California and it just clicked. And all of a sudden we became traveling lovers. I had a lover in Chicago, one who had been married, had three children. Barbara had her lover in Houston. So we just decided we’d be traveling lovers. It was fun!" Finally, Fran couldn’t handle the distance, and in 1975 moved to Houston to be with Barbara. After managing stores for Joske’s and Battelstein’s, she quit retail. On her 50th birthday Fran started her own business. That was 20 years ago, and she still runs it, managing a crew of six people who clean houses for new construction.

Fran and Barbara were together for 20 years, and did the usual things–dinner with friends, movies, remodeling the house. One night Barbara went to bed saying she didn’t feel right. That night, she died of a heart attack. Fran was really mad at her for leaving her like that. That was seven years ago. Fran is still working through her loss. "I think it’s a thing of, you learn how to live without somebody, but you never get over missing ’em. It still hurts a little, but not like it did." She put Barbara’s ashes out in their yard, by the lemon tree. After her lover’s death, Fran found out about LOAF, and also joined AssistHers.

Betrayal: Fran tells the story of her gay uncle Bob

Fran had a gay uncle who lived in Dallas. They weren’t terribly close, but she got to know him better when she moved from Chicago to Houston; he’d stop by for a drink when he came to town for the holidays. Uncle Bob and his lover Jim were together for 47 years.

"After Bob had a stroke, he was able to walk and things. [But he] couldn’t talk. Two years after Bob’s stroke, Jim, his lover, who was 10 years older, had a heart attack and died. And I said, ‘Barbara, I really should go, just for Bob, as a support person.’ So I went to Dallas, and went over to the house. And it was unbelievable filth that they were living in. Because, I guess Jim was so old and he was senile. He was in his 80s. And my uncle couldn’t do anything. Oh, God. I cleaned the whole day. Because I’m a clean freak. It was very involved because he had no control of his bladder or anything else. So they were getting him dressed to go to the funeral. And I got over there, and they’d just got him dressed and he had a bowel movement, and it was all on his shoes and everything. Well, they just let him sit there, because they went out to buy rubber gloves and all this stuff. For God’s sakes! So I went in, cleaned him up, and got him ready. And then none of them would ride in the limousine they sent over. And he and I rode by ourselves to the funeral.

"Jim’s two sisters were very devout Catholics. After the funeral, they didn’t invite us to the house of the sister that lived there. So he and I went back to the house and my stepfather was there. And some friends of theirs came over and brought some food. I went back over the next morning, my stepfather and I, just to talk to him, see what was going to happen. And one of the sisters and her husband were there, and they evicted him from the house. They took everything from that man.

"So I inherited him. And I said, ‘No, he can’t leave now. I have to make everything ready for him. It’ll take me at least a week.’ So, that weekend, Barbara and I flew up. Because the only thing he got out of the deal, Bob had an old Cadillac. That was the only thing in his name in the whole house. About six months before, Jim, his lover. had signed everything over to his sisters. Jim had told me, ‘I just hope I did the right thing.’ Jim and Bob had CDs, they had money, and they had invested stuff, and they had the house that was paid for, and Jim had signed everything over to the sisters, because a sister had convinced him that if he died and Bob couldn’t take care of everything, then they could. So they really did.

"I’m still mad at them! I wrote ’em a 10-page letter, but Barbara wouldn’t let me mail it. Oh, I just went into a tirade! So, anyway, we drove him back to Houston. And he came and lived with Barbara and I for about four months. But, he needed too much supervision and I couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t talk, but he understood everything. I’m sure it was frustrating for him. So, anyway, I put him in a nursing home which wasn’t too far, and then again I felt guilty about that.

"So I went and got him every weekend for about three years. And it was just wearing me out. All weekend with him, and then Barbara got to where she’d say, ‘God, can’t we have any time alone?!’ You know, ‘You’re taking better care of him than you are of me’ type thing. And my blood pressure must’ve gone up to 290 over 100,000, whatever it was.

"I moved him to another nursing home because there was a gay woman there who had run the one we first put him in. And her assistant and also the administrator, they were all gay. Bob was helpful. He’d run around the hall and help people. He couldn’t talk, but he’d ‘Huhmmh.’ He was pretty wild, too; he was fun. And he died two years ago. I’m sorry we couldn’t have found a gay nursing home for him, because he would’ve liked that.

"The admission girl was gay, and cuter than hell. And it’s a terrible story to tell, but she called one afternoon and she said, ‘Fran? You’ve got to talk to Bob.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ She said, ‘Well, I was sitting in my office and all of a sudden the head nurse came running in and said, ‘Lily, get out in the hall quick! Come here!’" There was an emergency, all right. Uncle Bob and another fellow were engaging in oral sex right there in the hall!

"God! He didn’t forget how to do it, hell no! So I had to go talk to him and all the nurses, like he was in grade school! So I said, ‘Now, Bob, I don’t want you to do anything like that again. It’s all right if you go to your room.’ Because, even the nurses said, ‘You know, in the privacy of his room with the consent of the other person, it’s okay.’ But not out in the hall. When he could talk, Bob told jokes every minute. He was always lively. I have his ashes in there. Someday I’ll take ’em back to Dallas, back to the house they’d lived in all those 47 years."