An Evening with Birdy O'Day: when the ordinary meets the extraordinary and discovers their own uniqueness
14 Jul 2024.

by Drew Rowsome - Richard phoneo from Coach House Press website

There's a special intimacy that hairdressers or barbers have with their clients. Similar to what barflies have with their cronies and the occasional lucky stranger who is willing to listen. Life stories and secrets are shared and deep psychological longings and motivations are revealed, often unintentionally. It's the ancient art of gay storytelling, the sharing of a history that would otherwise be lost, that author Greg Kearney (The Desperates, Pretty Progress) conjures on the pages of An Evening with Birdy O'Day. Roland is an aging HIV+ hairdresser renting a chair in deepest, darkest Winnipeg. Scraping by, he shares his life with Tony who lives with chronic pain and lives for a night out at the casino. Roland likes to have a beer, or several, after work at Club 200, the last remaining gay bar in Winnipeg. Roland has a story to tell, of his childhood friend and now lifelong obsession, Birdy O'Day who left the 'Peg to become a singing sensation, a superstar. And who left Roland behind.

Roland narrates a deeply personal and idiosyncratic saga, from his childhood before the wonder of Birdy, and the tragic aftermath of his departure. Kearney gives him a voice that is full of rueful humour, self-deprecation, and a continual sense of wonder. Hardships and eccentric happenstances fill the pages, but Roland views it all through a matter of fact lens laced with the incisive scathing wit of gay speak. Kearney knows, and Roland learns, how tenuous the bonds of love and friendship are. How difficult life can be while still being fabulous. How when the ordinary meets the extraordinary and discovers their own uniqueness. How dreams shatter but remain embedded in our psyche. It is a masterful performance, a richly plotted narrative full of searing insight and heartbreak. And deliriously funny. Kearney has been working on this novel for a long time—The Desperates was published a decade ago—and it shows. Each sentence is polished and smooth, the one-liners camouflaged until they strike, and all building with the skill of an adroit stand-up comedian.

It is tempting to crib from the inventive plotline, but spoilers in this instance would be a crime. Far better to let Roland and Kearney tell the tale. Roland's mother has a character arc that roils from the tragic to the pragmatic to the stoic without once letting the character falter or lose her fascination. Birdy remains a partial enigma only because Roland is so blinded by the gifts of beauty and musicianship that Birdy possesses. And the preternatural self-confidence that is Birdy's mode of surviving in a world inhospitable to the different, the fey, the glamorous. We follow Birdy's career trajectory through Roland's scrapbooks and memories and it is a scathing, delightfully nasty satire of the music business, particularly the Canadian and the closeted. The analysis of Birdy's album releases is laugh out loud lethal and deadly accurate. When Birdy decides to grace Winnipeg with a homecoming concert, "An Evening with Birdy O'Day," Kearney lances the complex emotions at play with a subtle but dazzling sentence linking Diana Ross and casino attendance. It took my breath away, broke my heart, and had me laughing at its simple accuracy and audacity. 

There are many passages that have the same effect, as does An Evening with Birdy O'Day overall. The descriptions don't stint on the seediness or darkness, but they are vivid and hopeful. Kearney has a carefully crafted gift of projecting a visual onto the page so we can share it. Of refusing to dissect an emotional state so that we feel it instead of gawking at it. The characters who are mocked—and gays can be vicious—deserve it, but Birdy, a monstre sacre, an empathetic villain if there ever was one, remains an object of desire, of hope. An Evening with Birdy O'Day explores that tenuous territory of friendships, of love affairs, that are dangerous and damaging but irresistible. Tying it in with the hero worship that we give to divas and pop stars. Both of those are blessings that gay men are particularly afflicted with but which spill over into the common zeitgeist. There were moments when I winced in recognition, startled from the long passages where I luxuriated in the joy of being told a tall tale by a virtuoso. 

An Evening with Birdy O'Day is also about music's ability to alter our perceptions, our lives. Kearney expertly evokes how a first hearing of Dionne Warwick singing Bachrach and David changes one's life. How our sexuality is linked to the tones of a song and performing. How emotions are manipulated, and Birdy is a manipulator extraordinaire, a performer, and hearts are broken or healed by music. An Evening with Birdy O'Day is also suffused with nostalgia. Nostalgia for classic pop, disco, gay bars as community, uninhibited sex, for possibilities. Roland learns not to settle but to accept. It is a bittersweet hard-earned lesson. But he leaves us, thanks to Kearney, with documentation that is brimming with laughter and tears. And possibilities. When a hairdresser or that convivial imbiber on the bar stool next to you fails to charm, An Evening with Birdy O'Day will.