Cover Story: Home at last

Hollis Gillespie and pals catapult themselves into the national spotlight

Every week, Hollis Gillespie chronicles the misadventures of her crazy-quilt life in the pages of Creative Loafing. If you’ve read her Moodswing column or heard her on National Public Radio, you already know she was the child of a bomb-making mom and a traveling trailer salesman, whose union was soured by drink and disappointment. She spent her childhood on the move from one rented house to the next: California, Florida, back to California, even Zurich for a while.

Gillespie’s itinerant upbringing fueled in her a fear of being homeless, and one of her happiest moments was when she bought her first house. So what if the neighborhood was populated with drug dealers and prostitutes?

That’s the premise of Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales From a Bad Neighborhood, Gillespie’s debut book. A collection of columns culled primarily from Creative Loafing, the book is published by Harper Collins subsidiary Regan Books and comes out March 2.

Today, Gillespie, 42, is an international flight attendant and a translator who speaks three languages. She’s the twice-divorced mother of 3-year-old Mae, a brown-eyed, curly haired girl who’s as talkative as her mom. And she now owns several houses, including some rental properties around town, all in transitional neighborhoods.

Aside from her haphazard childhood, Gillespie’s favorite column subjects are her three closest friends: lighting designer Lary Blodgett, artist Daniel Troppy and bartender Grant Henry. Their outlandish exploits have led some readers to suspect the fellas are fictitious — products of Gillespie’s sordid imagination. But they’re not. One recent rainy morning, Hollis and her very real pals gathered in Grant’s Telephone Factory loft to talk about their friendship, which informs so much of Gillespie’s writing.

From reading Hollis’ column, this is what we know about you, Lary. You live in a concrete alley. You like acid, cats and guns. You bed beautiful, exotic women, but Hollis secretly thinks you’re gay. What can you tell us about yourself that we don’t already know?

Lary: That I’m a caring, loving parent.

Hollis: Aaaaahhhh! Oh my God!

Lary: No, I like to keep below the radar. I like to operate in the gray zones.

Hollis: He’s building an underground bunker right now. ...

Daniel: We have a bunker here. ...

Hollis: Yeah, the Telephone Factory has a bunker. This is where I’m coming with Mae if anything ever goes down, man. I’ll be knocking on the door yelling, “Let me in, you fuckers!”

Grant, you call yourself the happiest man alive. According to Hollis’ column, after you got married and raised a family in the suburbs, you discovered you were gay. You also have an alter ego named Sister Louisa who’s an excommunicated nun and an artist. What can you tell us about yourself that we don’t already know?

Grant: Probably that I’m the squarest man alive.

Hollis: What is this, lie to Creative Loafing day? Oh my God!

Grant: It’s true. I’m a responsible parent. The most important thing to me in my whole life is my child. I live my life like I would like my child to live her life.

Hollis: That’s why she lives off the coast of Mexico.

Grant: She likes Mexican men! I taught her well. I mean, there’s a Navy base there!

Lary: You’re an overachiever.

Grant: I’m a recovered overachiever. I used to wear a suit until I went to bed. I had a little gold pocket watch and a three-piece suit, short conservative hair ...

Daniel: Your shoes and your handbag matched.

Grant: It all matched. But in hindsight ... when I was married, we lived in this house for seven years and I redecorated it five times.

Lary: There were hints there.

Grant: Yeah, there were hints there. ...

Lary: Grant didn’t discover he was gay, remember? We told him he was gay.

Hollis: I have seen the video from your second wedding reception. You were more gay when you were straight, let me tell ya. You are more macho now that you’re out of the closet.

Grant: I never lived a double life, though. When I was married, I was married. ... I was the youngest deacon at the First Presbyterian Church in Marietta. I was on the board. ...

Hollis: (sings) We are the world, we are the world ...

Grant: I was the PTA president of the elementary school when my kids ...

Hollis: (still singing) We are the children. ...

Lary: So what saved you? What pulled you away from all that?

Hollis: He helped build libraries. ...

Lary: He dug ditches in Ghana. ...

Hollis: He went on missions to Borneo where he built mud huts. ... He dewormed puppies with his penis. ... I’m kidding, OK, I’m sorry. ...

Lary: Go get that puppy out of the tree. ...

Hollis: I’m so glad I met you after that. ...

Grant: I’ve not told y’all this before, but ... I was always raised to be a good boy. I always did the right thing. ... My whole zone was to be a good person. And then I met Hollis and Lary and Daniel, and I realized that being good isn’t the highest order of life. To be authentic is more important. ... I promise you, that is exactly what allowed me to let go of what I was and become what I am.

Hollis: That’s exactly how I feel. I mean, I’ve known Lary for a hundred years and I just remember back when I first met him, I was just trying to fit in so bad with everything. People were purging me out of their circles right and left, and I’d get so upset. But I had Lary, and he’d be like, “What are you trying to fit in for?” And I’d be like, “I just want to have a boyfriend and a normal life.” Then I met Daniel and Grant and when the four of us got together, it was just like ... this window opened up and we went through it. ...

Daniel, this is what we know about you from Hollis’ column: You’re the only one of the group in a long-term committed relationship. You’re an acclaimed artist represented by Marcia Wood Gallery. You don’t drive outside a five-mile radius of your home. What can you tell us about yourself that we don’t already know?

Daniel: That I really hate cats.

Hollis: Oh, shut up. That’s no surprise. We all know that.

Daniel: Uh, gosh ...

Hollis: OK, he always surprises me because when I met him, he was acting all simple and like, “Oh, I’m not educated, I don’t do anything,” and as I got to know him, I realized he’s been to the rainforest, he’s ...

Lary: He’s an actor.

Hollis: He is an actor. He’s world-traveled. ...

Daniel: Well, I was buying my cover. My cover was a folk artist. I was trying to get into folk art galleries.

Hollis: We were all buying our covers when we first met, except Lary. Lary never had a cover. ... Then, when we met each other, we stopped buying our covers and we ended up being ourselves.

Lary used to tell me — we would go to the original location of the Vortex — and I would sit there and go, “I have to find something where getting old doesn’t matter. I just hate always having to be dependent on whether somebody approves of me or whether they like what I’m doing. I’ve got to find something where what people think doesn’t fucking matter.” And Lary was always saying, “Well, you’re a writer. What better way is there to do that?” And I wasn’t getting published anywhere, and I was like, “But I can’t,” and he was like, “Oh fuck, just do it.”

Lary: Writers write.

Hollis: Yeah! Nobody knows what you look like, so it doesn’t matter if you get old. If you worry about what people think, you’re never going to get anywhere as a writer. You have to be independent. You have to be truthful and passionate about what you’re writing. And if people don’t like you, that’s almost better than if they do. Because then you incite passion, and any response as far as art is concerned ... whether they hate you or love you, is a good response. He’s been telling me that pretty much since I met him.

Lary: What better way to piss more people off than writing things they don’t want to hear about?

Hollis: Exactly.

Grant: You know, we talked about this. We had meetings. We literally had meetings where we talked about catapulting each other. ...

Hollis: It’s our duty. ...

Grant: It was our duty to catapult each other into greatness.

Hollis: Except Lary. See, Lary was always already great.

Lary: So that’s what you guys were doing!

Hollis: We’ve always been like hermit crabs without our exoskeletons, flailing around trying to find ourselves, and Lary had always been found.

Grant: Lary is like worlds ahead of us because ... we care.

Hollis: We still care and Lary could give a shit! We’re all aspiring to be like Lary.

Grant: He doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks. There is nothing anybody could say to him that would affect who he is.

What’s your secret, Lary?

Lary: Drugs at an early age.

Hollis: Is that what you’d recommend?

Lary: Oh, yes, by all means.

So how did you all meet?

Hollis: I used to write for Atlanta magazine and the art director there suggested Daniel as an article idea. And I met him and we were both so not ourselves. I was married and pregnant and living in the suburbs ... but I ended up losing that baby and also divorcing that man, so ...

Lary: Who? ...

Hollis: This was my first husband.

Daniel: Alan.

Hollis: Alan, yeah. He was a nice man, but he just didn’t love me, and I kinda, like, draw the line there. ... I like to be loved if I’m going to marry somebody. Anyway, um, I went to him and I was a pregnant suburban housewife, and you were ...

Daniel: She had a little sweater on and drove a big, uh, what were you driving?

Hollis: It was a Honda, four-door Accord.

Daniel: She had her little cardigan and her hair pulled back. ...

Hollis: I had a French braid. ...

Lary: Are you serious?

Hollis: Serious.

Daniel: She lived in Roswell.

Hollis: And you had your overalls on and you were putting your little stick figures together selling that stuff for $35 a piece.

Grant: I remember the exact moment we met. I used to buy stuff at yard sales and resell it. And I walk into this restaurant in Kirkwood one day ... and here is Cathy and Daniel sitting there — I had seen Daniel in this antique store that I used to sell stuff to — and I told them about my new shop in an East Atlanta coffeehouse. So they came to my shop and they brought Hollis. And Hollis comes in, in her, you know, kind of way, and says, “I want you to decorate my house.” ... And then, next thing I know, you have a party. ...

Hollis: But before the party ... I was sitting in my bedroom and it’s like 2 in the afternoon and I’m dead and I hear this knock at the door, and I’m like, whatever, I’m not going to answer it. Then I hear another knock, then I hear this big clunk, clunk, bing, bang, bang, rattle, rattle, rattle, bang, so I go out there, and there is Grant with a fireplace mantel on his shoulder — huge, pink, nasty-ass, lead-flaking fireplace mantel. ...

Lary: The decorating had begun.

Grant: And you invited me to your party. ...

Hollis: The party I invited him to was Jill and Sean Hannity’s going-away party when they left here to go to New York.

Lary, how did you meet Hollis?

Lary: At a wedding ...

Hollis: When I first moved to Atlanta, I had started dating this guy ... and our first date was Mary Jane’s wedding. ... And Lary was there — she was Lary’s ex-girlfriend. So I met you on the day your ex-girlfriend married another man.

Lary: It was a great day. That was a load off my mind.

Hollis: Shut up! You were a fool to have let her go.

Grant: Somebody said y’all were going to get married. Is that true?

Lary: Well, we talked about getting engaged, but fortunately the IRS was after me, so she wouldn’t consider any union until I shook that off.

Hollis: You were living in that warehouse and I remember you said, “Come on over, and let’s make things in my warehouse.” So I came over and just sort of played — it was like a play date. We were making all this stuff. He had all these artist’s supplies.

Hollis: And then we all went to Prague right after that.

Grant: No, before Prague we went to Tuscaloosa.

Hollis: But Lary didn’t go on that trip.

Daniel: Our first big trip was two or three months after we met you; all of us went to Prague and Amsterdam.

Lary: Yeah, that’s when we became a unit. That’s when we bonded.

So what can you all tell us about Hollis that would be surprising?

Lary: I think you already know she lives in a Hollis-centric universe.

(Silence falls. The men sip their drinks and look at their feet.)

Hollis: All right, fine, you guys. You can’t think of anything good to say?

Daniel: Something good, huh ...

Hollis: Oh, it does not even have to be something good. ...

(Silence)

Hollis: They’re just protecting me.

(Silence)

Hollis: AH! I’m a good mother!

Daniel: Everybody already knows you’re a good mother.

Hollis: No, they don’t!

Daniel: You write about Mae. ...

Hollis: But they don’t know I’m a good mother. Tell them I’m a good mother!

Daniel: Well, she’s a great mother to Mae! She’s a wonderful mother.

Grant: She has a soul.

Daniel: Everybody knows that, too.

Hollis: You know, we have a saying. We actually have a lot of sayings, but one of them is “Fake it till you make it.” I don’t have a lot of confidence, and I’m constantly battling that.

I think people would be surprised to know that about you.

Hollis: I’m totally always facing my own lack of confidence. I force myself to do what I do.

How would you characterize your friendship?

Grant: Dysfunctional family.

Hollis: Yeah, I think that’s right.

Do you fight?

Hollis: Fuck yeah. Especially me and Lary. No, we’ve all gotten into fights. We’ve all been like, “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU!”

Daniel: But it doesn’t really last.

Hollis: No, then we get through it, so you’re right — dysfunctional family.

So, then you all became characters in Hollis’ column.

Hollis: Yeah, isn’t that funny? Poets, Artists & Madmen picked up my column in 1996. The first couple of columns I wrote were, oh, how to find perfect yard sales, you know, like stupid Family Circle kind of crap. And they were like, “Whatever you want to write is fine,” so I decided to take them to the mat on that. I think the first breakout piece was called “Size Matters,” and it was about penises. ...

What’s it like being characters in a column?

Grant: I detach myself from it. ...

Hollis: Well, you guys, it was kind of spoon-fed to you. Because at first, there weren’t very many readers and it just kind of gradually grew.

Lary: I’m just going to start charging for my services.

Hollis: The thing is, now we’re scheduled to make an appearance at the Margaret Mitchell House on March 11, and when I told Lary that, I could just feel ...

Lary: ... the door closing ...

Hollis: I know! I could just hear the dungeon doors slamming shut. Like, “This is work. When I have to show up, just forget it.”

Lary: And I go, “What’s the compensation for this?”

Hollis: I know! There’s none! I do feel like this is kind of a burden I’m putting on them. ... I was worried that Lary wouldn’t show up today. I saw him out there in his car and he wouldn’t come out of his car. And I was like, Lary’s not coming in. ...

Lary: I was still indecisive.

Hollis: And I’ve told him, when it starts to feel like work, just don’t show up. I don’t care.

Grant: Yeah, but March 4th, though ...

Hollis: That’s the launch party.

Grant: Alcohol. Wild Turkey.

Hollis: Oh, yeah! I owe Lary a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Lary: I know, that’s why I came.

suzanne.vanatten@creativeloafing.com