“When I was a kid, I was very tiny and scrawny and a grownup asked me, ‘And what are you going to be when you grow up, Henry?’ and I turned to him and said, ‘I’m going to be a character.’” And Augustus Henry Tawyea grew up to do just that. As owner of Heritage House Interiors in Ocean County, N.J., both Tawyea and his partner, David Zambelli, occupy space as characters. I chatted with Tawyea about being openly gay in a small shore village.
PGN: So what made you tell him that you were going to be a character? AHT: Well, I overheard my Uncle Bob saying that my grandfather was a goddamn character and I loved my grandpa, so I wanted to grow up to be just like him!
PGN: Well, you’re very timely: There’s a whole cable station based around the motto, “Characters welcome.” AHT: Isn’t it great? I never understood why people want to assimilate. There’s such wonderful variety in the world — black, white, Christian, Jew, Muslims — why would you want to have everybody be like me or … you?
PGN: Yeah, it’s funny, I run into people all the time who, when you ask them what they are, they respond that they don’t like labels. I love labels: I embrace being a biracial, left-handed lesbian. AHT: Well, there’s an old saying that the only people who don’t like labels are bottoms.
PGN: What do you like to do for fun? AHT: We like to travel: We’ve been to Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Sicily, Belgium, Malta. We went to my partner David’s ancestral home, which was on a mountaintop in Italy. We were so high up we were literally in the clouds. Which was not as romantic as it sounds. On the ground in Palermo, it was warm so we wore nothing but light shirts, but by the time we got to the top of the mountain, it was windy and freezing! All the little old Italian men were looking out the windows at the crazy Americans shivering in the bitter cold.
PGN: And what’s your ancestry? AHT: I come from a very early-American background. We’ve been here from the early 1600s. We’re English and Scotch with just enough French to make it interesting. That came about in 1900 when my grandmother met a Frenchman. We were founders of the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution] and she was the ultimate WASP. We thought we were very special people. When the Frenchman proposed to her, her family immediately locked her up, thinking she was out of her mind even thinking about marrying a French guy. She announced, “When I turn 21 you have to release me and I’m going to marry him.” My great-grandfather, Augustus Spalding, handed her a suitcase and said, “Then get the hell out of my house.” She left, married the Frenchman and had 14 kids. FYI, I’m the 13th consecutive Augustus.
PGN: Where are you from? AHT: My family was one of the founding families of a small Connecticut town, over 300 years ago. I moved to northern New Jersey with one of my first lovers and lived there and at the Jersey shore. I met David 40 years ago and we’ve been together over 30 years. We’re designers and we decorate, restore and furnish antique houses. We love architecture, which is why we travel so much. PGN: What did your parents do? AHT: My mother was a homemaker and my father was a small businessman, but his claim to fame was that he was a war hero. During the second world war, he rescued the dead off the beaches during major invasions. He was my hero and she was a fantastic mother. During the 1950s, we moved to South Carolina and that was during the time when black people still had to step off the curb if a white person walked by. Coming from the North, we didn’t understand that. Being Yankees, we got beat daily by the white kids. My father’s partner had embezzled his money so when we moved back North, we lived in the poor section, the ghetto. We’d developed strong Southern accents, which the black kids understandably didn’t care for, so we got beaten again. Through it all, my mother was our rock.
PGN: What was your favorite toy as a kid? AHT: I got a teddy bear for Christmas when I was 6 months old and I had it until I was in my 30s. In 1943, my father went to boot camp and when he returned, he brought me a suitcase full of toy soldiers — soldiers and sailors and marines and tanks and boats. I treasured that every night that he was away. We used to kiss his picture every night and the day he came home was the happiest of my life. I was 4 and I remember he got off the train and scooped me up. In those days, when the man of the house was gone, you put the car up on blocks. We went home and he put the tires back on, put me in the car and we waved goodbye to my mother and sister and went for a ride. I felt so special.
PGN: Any soldiering for you? AHT: I was in the Navy. I worked for the department that did the coding of the messages between D.C. and the fleet during the Cuban blockade.
PGN: Tell me a little about what you do now. AHT: We have a shop in Ocean County at the Jersey shore that we’ve run for 36 years. I’d describe the shop as a boutique. We have art and furniture and we live on the property. People come in and have coffee and talk as well as shop. I love to talk about all the taboo subjects: sex, politics and religion! No one escapes the shop without learning something about gay culture, history or politics, I don’t care who they are. I’ve had people storm out of the store, but most people find it enlightening. Though during the last election, I threw a few people out of the store who made racial comments about Obama. I will not tolerate it: I don’t care what they want to spend. He’s doing such a great job, I think 70 percent of the difficulties he faces are people resisting his policies out of pure racism, and he’s man enough to not say it or use it as an excuse. No one else could have gotten us out of this mess as quickly as he has. He’s a great president — and the way he’s restoring our reputation in the world, he’s a gift.
PGN: I understand there were some incidents at the store? AHT: When we first moved there, it was a fishing village. There were 1,400 people in the whole town; now it’s up to 20,000. We had a very homophobic neighbor and she was joined by a few others, along with the police and politicians in the village. We would walk into city hall just to get a dog license and people would snigger. The mayor came into our shop and announced that our kind was not welcomed in his town and that we should leave and I told him over my dead body. I then told him to take his sorry ass and get the fuck out of my store. We hung out a gay flag and dug our heels in. For a while we experienced a period of vandalism. They would uproot our landscaping and break our windows, they broke into the store and even tried to set it on fire. The police harassed our employees, they’d stop them and impound their cars for no reason. We brought some of the people to court and it finally stopped.
PGN: That must have taken a lot of fortitude to hang in there. AHT: No one — no one — tells me where I can or can’t live. You rise above the bullshit. Since then, there has been tremendous population growth in our town and we have become one of the local “sights.” People come from afar to visit us. Things are getting better all around, but as a community we still have a long way to go.
PGN: What would you say is your most unusual possession? AHT: Forty-five years ago, I met a man from Germany and we had a wonderful summer. I found out that his family had been wealthy industrialists, but they were Jewish and lost everything they owned during the war. Eventually, he was able to petition the government to get back control of the company, which to this day is one of the biggest companies in the world. We had a lovely time, but he had to go back home to marry an Italian countess. He offered to take me with him and support me, but I’m nobody’s “keptie,” so I turned him down. On our last evening together, I found out that the only people in his family to survive the Nazis were him and his sister. The only possession he had from his family was his grandmother’s ring, a black, oval onyx ring. She’d died in one of the camps. He told me that the only gift worth giving had to be a treasure that was given from the heart and that he wanted me to have it. I guess having so much money, he realized that to give something of personal value was the best gift of all. In the mid ’60s, I’d done some fundraising for handicapped kids and the governor of Alaska had given me a state seal of Alaska. They made one each year and it was my favorite possession, which I then gave to him. It was kind of like an O’Henry story. My sister was handicapped and suffered from seizures, sometimes 25 a day, so my work with those charities meant a lot to me.
PGN: Most unusual job? AHT: Because my sister was so ill with a pre-existing health condition, I had to get a job each summer. At 13, she was read her last rites, and every penny we had went to her care. So to get a job, I would tell prospective employers that I’d quit school because no one wanted someone who was going to leave three months later. I got a job in a pencil-making factory. It was awful: I worked in the lead room, where we would take handfuls of lead and roll and separate them for the machine. It was just gross: I’d be covered with graphite. I learned quickly that I needed to work for myself. I can’t work if I don’t enjoy what I’m doing. Over the years, I’ve owned an art gallery and an antique shop, but we’ve never done anything just for money. We’ve been lucky and been successful, but we’ve never compromised our beliefs.
PGN: An example? AHT: One day we got a call from a friend who deals only with high-end customers. She had a very wealthy woman who’d just bought a house and wanted it furnished. The woman came into the shop and you could tell she’d probably been a looker in her youth, but now she was obese. But apparently no one told her that her glory had faded. She looked at a bed and headboard that was clearly priced and said to me very flirtatiously, “I’m sure you can do a little better than that for me” and she thrust her breasts at me. I’d been told she was a real bitch so I said, “You do know I’m gay, don’t you? That won’t get you very far, but if your husband is cute I might consider giving him a discount.” She stormed out of there in a huff and my friend called to say, “You know that was a potential $50,000 sale. You should have known that would upset her.” I said, “I knew damn well it would upset her — that was the whole point. Mission accomplished.” Some people just have to learn they can’t have everything. It was a great afternoon. Another time I was asked to be on the planning commission and I told them that I knew all about the payola deals going on and that if they wanted me, I wasn’t about to tolerate it. They acted put out that I’d even insinuated that it happened, but I remember when we went to expand on our complex, the building inspector wanted $500 and I refused.
PGN: Any phobias? AHT: I fear for the world. I think we’re going in the wrong direction. Again, take Obama. He’s someone who I dearly wished would bring hope, but there’s this rabid contingent that is so racist, they’ll fight against him even when it’s against their own interests. They’re willing to pay the cost for their prejudices. There’s just so much prejudice around. I see it in the store. Someone will come in and see two white guys and feel it’s OK to make racists comments. We’re “one of them,” so they feel free to spew their thoughts. And don’t get me started on kids and poverty: How can you see a hungry kid and then park your fat ass in your Porche? Ugh. I was speaking to a very wealthy man, a billionaire, about all the new programs helping people and he said, “Who do you think is going to pay for all your programs?” and I said, “You, you fat cat! You raped my country for eight years and stole our money. I’m the atheist and, yet, I’m my brother’s keeper. You profess Christianity, but look at your attitude. What do you think St. Francis and Christ would think of you? What would they think of the 50,000 silver spoons hanging out of your mouth?” We have to share the world with these people. It saddens me.
PGN: Happy thoughts … Tell me about David. AHT: David makes my world go around. He is the most moral, ethical and positive human being I’ve ever met. And he takes care of me … I’m a very lucky guy. You can’t ask for more than to love and be loved.
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