Tito was not really my uncle, he was one of my mom’s flamboyant friends, back from her former life as part of an Argentine dance troupe.
The dance troupe was touring Latin America and went bankrupt in Panama. It left the performers stranded.
I guess in those days, something like this could be life-altering. If it happened now, you’d just FaceTime someone to send you money and it wouldn’t have been a big deal.
Anyways, If you couldn’t call home, and you didnt have any money, you were stuck.
So my mom and Uncle Tito and a bunch of others got stuck in Panama.
Uncle Tito was a flamboyant, chain smoker. He sort of looked like a sad Argentine Mick Jagger. Tito always wore an ascot, even though we were in Colon, Panama, where it’s hotter and more humid than the devil’s armpit.
He would come over and have coffee with mom. They would sit around, smoke cigarettes and talk for hours about the “good old days”
Whenever Uncle Tito would come over my dad would get visibly upset and say stuff to my mom and then storm off. I didn’t know what homophobic meant back then.
Mom had a lot of LGBT friends from being a performer and all that. I suppose 60 years ago that field would be one of the few places where alternative lifestyles were openly accepted.
I never knew how he supported himself, but I remember my mom telling me that sometimes he “dressed up like a girl.” Maybe he did drag shows to support himself.
I remember we went to visit him in the hospital once. Looking back, I think maybe he was attacked physically for who he was.
Many years later, I asked my mom about him and she said that Uncle Tito died in a train accident. I never knew much about his story, but I got the feeling that he really never had experienced happiness.
And now he never would.
I wish I had asked her to tell me all her stories about her life, all the stories of all those aunts and uncles from the performiance world.
