Roi Barnard pens his first book

Roi Barnard knows how to make an impression.

He arrives wearing a sharply tailored, light-colored suit complete with brown-and-white spectator wingtip shoes and a Panama-style fedora hat. He’s 84 now, and he has seen almost everything. He counts among his possessions a letter from J. Edgar Hoover, received when Barnard was working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He left law enforcement to become a model who at one point came into the orbit of Andy Warhol and his superstars at The Factory. He started Salon Roi, the popular Washington D.C. hair salon famed for its mural of Barnard’s favorite, Marilyn Monroe, on the side of the building. In Delaware, folks know Barnard from his time in Milton, where he volunteered with the Milton Historical Society and owned a home that was a stop along the Milton Garden Tour. 

And he has lived through tragedy all around him, whether it was the death of his beloved mother, or the deaths of so many friends and loved ones through the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. 

It was the death of his longtime partner, Joe, that led Barnard to pen his memoir, titled “Mister, Are You a Lady?” 

“I always thought I was a writer,” Barnard said. “When I was 12 years old, I pretended to be a journalist. And then I got afraid that my father would see my writings and kill me. So I put that thought way back. Three years ago, my partner of 25 years committed suicide because he had Alzheimer’s. I didn’t know what I was going to do. And then, a very good friend of mine bought me three Moleskine notebooks and said, ‘Roi, write.’ So then I started. After a while, when I put the pen in my hand, I wasn’t writing; it was his spirit. Then I finished the book and I was free.”

Barnard said he wrote most of the book in public places, taking a page out of Tennessee Williams’ belief that home has too many distractions. 

The book is filled with Barnard’s flamboyant style and sense of humor as he details his life story – the cover image shows Barnard with a classic 1970s-style perm and matching mustache, wearing a flowing robe and standing next to a white Christmas tree. 

The title of the book comes from a story Barnard tells in the very first pages, about an encounter with a young boy at the supermarket in Washington D.C. Barnard, decked out in a cowboy hat, short shorts and a tank top, is asked by the boy “Mister, are you a lady?” 

Barnard was born in North Carolina, and his brother, Buddy, died of pneumonia when he was 7 years old. In his book, Barnard said his father Willie never quite recovered from Buddy’s death, and the two had a very tempestuous relationship. Barnard said he knew at a very young age that he was different, and it scared him. He said his father told him not to kiss him goodnight because it would turn him into “a sissy.” Barnard developed his own idiosyncratic fashion style, leading his dad to often ask him, “Boy, what the hell is wrong with you?”

In the book, Barnard relates the story of how he inadvertently came out to his parents; he had been writing a letter to another man and accidentally sent it to his parents. He said for a time, Washington D.C. had a thriving gay scene, until the AIDS epidemic hit and gay men became social pariahs. Barnard says that period was the scariest time of his life.

“I lost five guys in my shop, all under 40. I was just terrified. The first guy, his mother barred me from the funeral,” he said. 

He bought the Milton house in 1988, after the death of his partner Charles Stinson from AIDS. 

“I had an insurance check and I thought, ‘Charles and I always wanted to have a house at the beach.’ I got an agent and we were looking at houses for $188,000. I don’t have that much money. She said, ‘What about Milton?’” Barnard said.

He drove around town and fell in love with an 1830s home on Federal Street. He renovated it and lived in it until 2020. Barnard now splits his time between his main home in Hockessin and his Milton home in Paynter’s Mill.  

Barnard said he was not nervous at all about putting his life story in book form – a documentary is also in the works – and he plans to write another book about his relationship with his father, which improved in Willie’s last decade of life. 

“I get that the world’s not gay. But I also understand that we all have a place in it. I will not apologize for myself anymore,” he said. “I’ve had a charmed life.”

“Mister, Are You A Lady?” can be found at online booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.