Billie Allen

She knew me as I was. And she knew, too, the artist I’m writing about currently: the late filmmaker and director, Bill Gunn. The two Bills. Companeros. She of the beautiful mind and skin, he of the same. I met her or saw her, first, when I was no more than fifteen years old, at the poet and raconteur Owen Dodson’s house; that was in the nineteen-seventies; she had been a star on the black and white theatre circuit for quite some time by then, performing in “Funnyhouse of a Negro,” as a young woman, understudying Diana Sands in “Raisin in the Sun,” being mentored by Ethel Waters. At one point during our recent conversation, Billie discussed a man I met through Owen–the late performer Gordon Heath, whose skills as an actor Billie, the actress par excellence, described one recent afternoon with cutting relish. Gordon had a bar in Paris called L’Abbaye, where he and his lover, Lee Payant–whom he was very cruel to, according to Owen–sang folk songs. “That’s where he belonged,” Billie said, rolling her eyes. Heath was a deeply cruel man–I experienced his shocking internalized homophobia and racism first hand, at his little apartment near Lincoln Center, he was living there with a much younger lover. As Owen and I left the flat, he said–I don’t want to repeat it–and then he slammed the door. Was he jealous his old friend and rival–rivalry kept his love of Owen fresh; new blood in old bodies–I wondered what made him so evil, and what made me myself, but Billie told me about each when I went to visit her and talk about Bill. In her beautiful light-filled flat, the skillful actress drew me out about myself while studying who I might be–and what I’ve become. While doing so, she told me why it was clear to her very early on why I couldn’t stay with Owen, or those friends he argued with out of a kind of mirroring, like Gordon. Sometimes it is too late and love does no good until you find those who revel in its attentions, like Billie.