“Good Ol’ William”
Barbara Hayes met Alan Bowne in Long Island when she was eighteen. In this interview with director Alastair Curtis, she reflects on their lifelong friendship.
Article published by The AIDS Plays Project in September 2025
L-R: Eugene Mazzei, Barbara Hayes and Alan Bowne in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, c.1970. Photo courtesy of Barbara Hayes.
How did you meet Alan?
It was 1966, I was in high school, and he was in his last year at Long Beach State College. His house on Ximeno Street was the local hangout. I was under eighteen at the time, so they kind of exiled me while they were shooting drugs in the bedroom. I was sitting in a rocking chair, reading Walden, and he walked in and goes, “Good book.” He was called William then.
I didn’t know that. Why did he change his name?
When he was introduced as William, everybody would call him Will, Bill or Billy. He didn’t like being called Billy - it really annoyed him. Alan - you can’t mess it up, right? Sometimes he had a nasty little tongue on him, so we called him “Sweet William.” He could ravage you with a few words if he wanted to!
That comes through in his plays - he created some tough, pretty frightening characters, didn’t he?
Alan was a tough guy, but he had another side to him too. Years later, I adopted a daughter, and he was always carrying her round in this snugly front pack. He just adored her! He could be the sweetest, but from his work, you’d never suspect it.
What was Alan’s upbringing like?
We both came from working-class, right-wing families in Southern California in the fifties. He referred to his dad as the “rutabaga” because he was such a couch potato. I mean, they were provincial. His mom thought if he could be a teacher, he’d have it made. He visited them maybe once a year, but it was hard for him. I don’t think he ever came out to them.
Do you remember when he came out to you?
It was the sixties! Everybody was doing whatever and nobody thought a thing. I was probably fifteen when I first heard about people being gay. And I went: okay, what the heck! It was like that for all my friends. We didn’t care. It was a non-issue for us, at least until AIDS. He only talked about coming out when we lived in San Francisco, though he never really had a long-term, committed relationship.
When did he move to San Francisco?
He moved to get his master’s at San Francisco State in 1968. I wasn’t studying - I just moved there because all my friends were doing the same. We lived together in a huge apartment on Ashbury Street with eight other Long Beach people. A lot of them went back to LA in the end, but he and I stayed roommates until 1970, when I moved out. It must’ve been two years after that, in the early 70s, that he moved to New York and decided to become a writer.
In an interview, he once said he “bummed around” until he was 35. What made him turn to playwriting?
He was always obsessed with literature, especially Henry James. He educated me on what was good too - he thought Wuthering Heights was the best book ever written! He started with short stories, which got mixed feedback, but people always loved his language.
Yes, his plays sound like no one else’s - his dialogue is streetwise and crude, but it’s always, ultimately, very lyrical.
He was a keen observer of people. He lived in the Lower East Side of New York for a long time, then Bensonhurst. He also dabbled in, you know, questionable neighbourhoods. Though he was mostly a pretty quiet guy, if you met him. He lived at both ends of the spectrum. When I visited him, we went to plays.
Beirut, written in 1987, is perhaps his most well-known play. It’s also his most direct response to the AIDS crisis. Do you recall anything about its origins?
At the start of the epidemic, there was all sorts of craziness. There was a Congressman in California who wanted to quarantine people with HIV/AIDS! It sounds alarmist in hindsight, but it was an idea people were seriously discussing. Alan felt he needed to write about it. Several friends had died, and he needed to come to terms with the fact he was probably carrying the virus too.
When did he return to California?
It was 1985, and he wanted a place to write as he figured he only had three or four years left. We’d bought a place in Petaluma, up on Sonoma Mountain, and told him he could come live with us. His front door was fifty feet from ours!
What was he like during those years?
He spent most of his time on the mountains. We had three dogs, three goats, and a bunch of cats, and he would take them for a walk every day, and they would all follow him through the fields. He was in his element. He had a goat named Annie who was very stubborn and persistent. When she wanted to come into the kitchen, she would just butt her head against the door. He always let her in!
It’s funny to hear how attached to the mountains he became, considering so many of his plays are set in the Lower East Side!
He was a vagabond by nature and lived all over, but it was like he could finally relax in Petaluma. He said, “I’ve finally found a home.” It was strange - he seemed to know he had AIDS before he got sick and was diagnosed. He was writing a novel called Wally Wonderstruck at the time, and in his journal he wrote that he wanted to get the second draft done, then whatever happens, happens. It was a few weeks after he sent the second draft to his agent that he died.
You knew Alan nearly all of his life then.
I was his longest friend. He died on our property in 1989. He had an intestinal rupture. He could’ve gone into hospital to have it taken care of, but he just said, “No, I’ll withstand.” He wanted to let go. I’d been his caregiver, along with a Kansas farm girl named Kelly Hunt, who came to read to him every day. Just before he died, a hospice worker asked if there was anything we wanted to say to each other. I said, “I’m good.” And he said, “I’ll just be good ol’ William and you’ll be good ol’ Bar.” I think he was as much at peace as you can be with the situation. His spirit just shone through to the end, you know.
Barbara Hayes is the executor of Alan Bowne’s estate. She is a family therapist and author of Beware of Dogs: How to Avoid Dating Disasters. She lives in Petaluma, California.