WHERE THE BOYS WERE

Sad to hear that Neil Sedaka died last week. Eighty-six may be a ripe, old age but it happens to be my mother’s age so it once again gives me pause to wonder how long her good health will hold out. Fingers crossed.

 

I’ve been known to go down a Neil Sedaka rabbit hole a couple times a year. YouTube does me the courtesy of selecting “Laughter in the Rain” whenever it finds itself on a ’70s loop which seems custom-made for me.

 

When Sedaka’s death was announced, I did some Googling about his life and his music. Didn’t know he gets a shout-out—“Sedaka is back”—at the end of Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together,” a song he co-wrote with his frequent writing partner, Howard Greenfield. That, of course, sent me down another rabbit hole: Who was Howard Greenfield?

 

The first thing that struck me was Greenfield lived a much shorter life, dying just shy of his fiftieth birthday in 1986. What had happened to him?

 

First, however, being the pop music geek I am, I read about the hits he wrote with Sedaka, including ones Sedaka recorded such as “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Calendar Girl” and “Oh! Carol” (in honour of Carole King) and those the pair wrote for others, including “Where the Boys Are” by Connie Francis and Captain & Tennille’s “You Never Done It Like That.” With other collaborators, Greenfield wrote “Crying in the Rain” by the Everly Brothers, “Venus in Blue Jeans” by Jimmy Clanton, “Foolish Little Girl” by the Shirelles and “Two Less Lonely People in the World” by Air Supply. He also co-wrote the theme music for TV’s Bewitched. (Try to get that out of your head now.) Greenfield was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1991.

 

So what happened to Greenfield? Why did he die so young? According to Wikipedia, Greenfield was openly gay and partnered with cabaret singer Tory Damon who also died in 1986. 

 

Still, I did not put the pieces together.

 

Greenfield died of AIDS complications on March 4, 1986 and Damon died from AIDS three weeks later.

 

I bonked my forehead like they do in those “I could’ve had a V8” TV commercials. 1986. AIDS. Of course. 

 

Just last week, a friend and I were talking about how it almost seemed COVID and the worldwide lockdown from six years ago never happened. How quickly we get back to “regular” lives. How quickly we forget.

 

I swore I’d never forget the AIDS crisis which I lived through during my years coming out. This, however, feels like a lapse in memory. Only a decade ago, I would have first assumed a male dying young in the mid-’80s died from AIDS complications. Has AIDS fallen off the radar…my radar? This serves as a reminder that it is important to keep real and creative stories about AIDS alive.

 

Too depressing, I’ve heard too many people say. “I want happy gay stories,”a friend of mine has said many times. I’ve seen agents requesting works of queer joy. All good. Still, AIDS happened. We must not forget. Movies like Longtime Companion and Philadelphia were important at the time, humanizing AIDS when fear and hate were often associated with the virus. They now feel like historical blips.

 

It feels we’ve failed to keep narratives about AIDS alive. Contrast this to the Holocaust which always remains ripe for a book or film. If not stories of persons dying of AIDS, where are the works about people who survived this brutal period where, in North America and Europe, at least, it was treated as a gay disease, another reason to shun and actively discriminate against gays. 

 

Yes, there has been great progress this century regarding gay rights but there is much to learn and remember from the AIDS era. Both the hate and the responsive activism can provide insights for the trans community and other queer people. I feel there is a complacency among non-trans queers. Having crosswalks painted over and Netflix not renewing Boots for a second season are not enough to create a rallying cry.

 

Being belatedly introduced to the career of Howard Greenfield, I am reminded of all the creative men—and the ordinary men—we lost to AIDS. A generation of gay men, my age and older, was culled thirty to forty-five years ago. As far as I know, Neil Sedaka lived a full life; Howard Greenfield, by contrast, had so much more living to do. Greenfield at least leaves a legacy of catchy, upbeat pop songs worthy of remembrance.

 

  

OH, FARRELL (Part 2 - A Chance for a Friendship to Deepen)

This is Part 2 of my memories about a gentle man, Farrell Cain, with whom I became good friends while I was still hiding in the closet as a gay man in Texas. (I encourage you to read Part 1 first. I split them up because, as a single piece, it runs a tad long.) 

Farrell had his own closet. Both of us had grown up with the church as an influence and, in '80s Texas, the closet felt safe, if a little smothering. It took me moving to California for us to finally come out to one another, not via conversation--somehow too risky--but by an exchange of letters. Whew! Not we could grow together, a lifetime ahead of us to build on our friendship.

 

When you have a friendship you know will last, there is always time. Another conversation, another visit. The gaps don’t matter. You pick up right where you left off. Farrell and I had that foundation. After law school, I moved to Vancouver. We continued to keep in touch, mostly by mail.

 

In March 1996, I called on his birthday. A woman with a thick drawl answered. Sorry, no Farrell. She’d had the number a few months. I figured Farrell had moved. Back then, most people didn’t have cell phones, Farrell (and me) included, and phone numbers didn’t transfer to a new home. I knew he’d lost his job which hadn’t made sense since he was smart, loyal and conscientious…a model employee. Maybe he found a roommate or got a cheaper apartment. He’d mentioned keeping busy by volunteering at the Dallas AIDS Resource Center to do their bookkeeping.  

 

Three days after his birthday, I sent him a card knowing the post office would forward it. I ended my note with:

Write me a quick note when you receive this so I know how to contact you.

Take care & please keep in touch.

 

Two months later, as I checked my mail after a gym workout, on my way to join my new Vancouver friends for coffee, the card sat in my post office box, stamped twice in red: RETURNED TO SENDER. My heart sank. Reconnecting with Farrell would require more effort. Calling directory assistance would hopefully do the trick.

 

But then, as I sat with my coffee, waiting for friends to get their lattes, I looked again at the envelope. I gripped the edge of the table. I felt the breath knocked out of me. Above where I’d written Farrell’s address in blue ink was a note in a lighter blue ink on one of five red lines from the return to sender stamp: “deceased.” I needed a friend to confirm I was reading things right.

 

It still stuns me when I look at the notation. How often did mail processors write this? Did they think anything of it? Did they wonder even for a second how the “sender”—that’s all I was as far as they were concerned—would react upon receiving it? Did they assume the addressee was someone far older than thirty-seven? They were just doing their job, working through stacks of mail.

 

In the spring of ’96, it was common to grab coffee with my gym friends and have AIDS come up in conversation. Several friends and acquaintances from Denman Fitness were HIV+ or had AIDS. Some appeared visibly frailer by the week. Some died. Our regular coffee spot in Vancouver’s West End was THE place for gays to congregate. We jockeyed for outside seating or stools by the window so we could cast our eyes on the men filing in and out or strolling by on the sidewalk. Not a coffee passed without the vestiges of AIDS in view—KS lesions; gaunt eyes; rough, discolored skin; canes for assistance; wheelchairs pushed by a friend or lover. My shock over Farrell’s death didn’t land with my friends. There was a certain numbness by then. So much death required some degree of emotional distancing to carry on, to not succumb to anger and despair.    

 

I can only deduct that Farrell died of AIDS. It was, after all, going around. It’s what gay thirty-somethings died of. It’s likely the reason he lost his job in conservative, God-fearing Dallas. (Did he lose it or was he too unwell?) It’s why he connected with the AIDS Resource Center. His cards mentioned being restless, wishing he could find a job and feeling financial strain. It shatters me every time I think about what he kept from me. Did he think I was too busy? He'd known I’d volunteered at AIDS Project Los Angeles. Why the barrier? Had self-hate and shame kicked back in?

 

I don’t know how he died, whether it was at home, in hospice or in hospital. I don’t know if he was alone or had a friend, maybe more, by his side, checking in on him, holding his hand at the end, gently telling him it was okay to let go. 

 

I have quietly lived with mourning and missing Farrell. As with many of my friends, we always socialized one to one. That’s common among introverts which we both were. The conversations are better, the attention undivided. There was no one to call for answers or to mutually console. 

 

For years now, I’ve wanted to make a panel to honor and remember him as part of the AIDS Quilt. I’ve researched it, I’ve planned what to put on it: symbols for tennis, the symphony, accounting, the University of Dallas and New Orleans Mardi Gras. I went to a quilting store on Granville Island to get a particular hardy tarp-like fabric for the panel, but they didn’t carry it. That one stumbling block was enough to let a simmering doubt boil over. I have a large button I can’t sew back on my jacket. I have jean pockets with unseen holes that need to be stitched. These tasks are not in my wheelhouse. I’m challenged with even threading a needle. How would I ever create a quilt that looked better crafted than a third-grade friendship bracelet? Anything I stitched together would dishonor rather than honor. Noble idea, but nothing I could execute. Alas, my plans remain pinned by a magnet to the filing cabinet in my office. Seeing his name makes me smile. I honor him, just more privately. Maybe that’s all he’d have wanted.

 

Every so often, I’d Google “Farrell Cahn” again, as if the greater passage of time would turn up some pre-Internet treasure. Sometimes I’d narrow the search, counterintuitively adding “Louisiana” or “Dallas” or “University of Dallas.” I had to do it. I had to feel like I was doing what I could to confirm the life of someone whose memory I seemed wholly responsible for holding. Maybe an obituary would provide closure. So that’s when he died. Maybe it would mention donating to an AIDS hospice. Maybe friends, family or even a longtime companion would be included. Would I reach out to his estranged sister a quarter of a century later? 

 

After each fruitless Google, I was left with one frustrating conclusion: ordinary people whose entire lives were BGE (Before Google Era) disappear without a trace. 

 

The only Farrell Cahn to be found on the worldwide web was a physician’s assistant in Burbank, California with a different first name but for whom Farrell was the middle name. But then a Facebook page came up for the University of Dallas. 

 

My Farrell! Apparently, the one and only Farrell Cahn. 

 

It took a fraction of a second to glimpse the picture, for it to register that it was a really bad photo and then to realize how precious it was. I burst into tears, an uncontrollable wail, something guttural surging from emotions I hadn’t fully processed over a quarter century. I was inconsolable, overwhelmed by grief, pain, sadness mixed with joy and relief. I found you, Farrell. I found something that goes beyond my personal memories of you. Twenty-first century, this is Farrell Cahn, an extraordinary ordinary man. Look at him bent over, looking up at an unseen photographer as he puts something in a trash bag.  

 

The Facebook post was from April 29, 2021: 

#fromthearchives Earth Day was last week. Did you help make our campus more beautiful? Farrell Cahn (BA ’80) definitely helped clean up campus in this picture from 1979. Follow in his footsteps and help make our campus a better place.

 

Farrell the activist? Farrell the environmentalist? Farrell the good guy. That’s something. That’s everything.

 

WORLD AIDS DAY, 2021

Here we are again, another World AIDS Day. I could wish there were never a reason for such a day, but that’s nothing but a wasted wish. AIDS happened. It’s still happening. I’m grateful there’s a day that’s been so well established for us to pause and to reflect, not just on our loved ones who died, who became HIV+ or who have been otherwise impacted, but to think with a broader perspective of all that the world has lost and all that still needs to be done.

 

All photos are from posts
for The AIDS Memorial.

I continue to look at the daily postings on the Instagram account for The AIDS Memorial to read remembrances of people who died of AIDS-related causes. I invite you to go there today, to gaze at the faces, to read a few tributes. If you’re too young to remember the most devastating period in the eighties and nineties, five minutes of going through some of the posts will make the loss more real to you. It will stop you from dismissing AIDS as something that happened Before You, like World War I or the fourteenth-century bubonic plague. You will understand, if only just a little, the devastation of AIDS. If you lived through that time, the posts will bring back some of the pain, fear and helplessness, but it’s imperative to remember, to honor and to wonder about all that the world lost in terms of the relationships and contributions of these individuals.

 

Every day, I smile at the photos. Dear souls, some with goofy smiles, some with really big hair, many enjoying a moment at a club or playing with a young niece or just sitting on a living room sofa. We didn’t have cell phones with dozens (hundreds?) of selfies and social media sites for posting every group dinner, each time going to the beach or even every Christmas or Halloween. (Someone may have taken photos on a Nikon or Polaroid camera, but they weren’t so easily shared, if at all.) Often, a post about an uncle, partner, father, aunt, mother, best friend or grandparent includes the comment, “This is my only photo.” It feels more precious and more important that these images are seen.

 

I’ve gotten so accustomed to viewing these posts that I catch my mind twisting and contorting the most basic facts as if to conjure a cup half full from an empty glass. Typically, a birthdate and a date of death are included. I do the quick math and catch myself thinking, “At least he made it to thirty-six.” Pardon my language, but it fits here: How fucked up is that? It comes, I suppose, from having read so many posts about people who never made it to thirty. Imagine being twenty-two, testing positive and knowing that death may come in a matter of months (if it’s the early eighties) or a few years (if it’s the nineties). Hope was there. The fight was there. Time wasn’t. There was no time to question the efficacy of experimental drugs, many of which ravaged the body. People invested in maybe. It was all that was offered. 

 

I’ve met men in recent years who have been HIV+ since the mid-eighties and are healthy, undetectable individuals living full lives. But most people died. Overwhelmingly stacked odds. Imagine making it twenty-four and setting your twenty-fifth birthday as a goalpost. (My buddy Stephen’s target was twenty-nine. He reached it and lived an extra month.) I’m fifty-seven and finding some warped relief or solace in someone living to thirty-six or forty-two or fifty-one is seriously fucked up. 

 

Families lost so much. So many partners lost their lovers, now often referred to as husbands even though marriage wasn’t an option back then. So many friendships were cut short. So many creative contributions will never be seen, so many mentors who never got to share life’s learnings. WE lost so much. 

 

AIDS is by no means over. For many, it can be effectively managed, but care is not uniformly accessible and there are complications regarding regularly taking medication and other health factors. According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), 680,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in 2020. (The AIDS epidemic has taken 36.3 million lives since what we consider to be the beginning.)

 

36.3 million individuals.

 

21% of women and 32% of men living with HIV still do not have access to antiretroviral therapy. In 2020, 1.5 million new HIV infections were diagnosed. There is still no cure. There is still no vaccine. There is still more to be done.

 

It’s essential that we continue to support those impacted by HIV and AIDS. It’s critical that we remember the history of AIDS—the discrimination, the neglect, the conscious inaction, the continuing stigma, the magnitude of the loss. By honoring and reflecting on loved ones and people we never knew who died of AIDS, may we keep the cause in our consciousness, may we continue to advocate for and financially fund supports for people living with HIV and AIDS and may we bring back a sense of urgency to finding the cure.

 

  

A CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COVID & THE AIDS CRISIS

Over the last week, eighty-four-year-old gay actor George Takei, best known as Sulu from “Star Trek,” was trending on Twitter. That’s not so unusual. The social media platform has given him a higher profile with more than three million followers, many of whom presumably were not around in the days of Sulu and may have never connected with any of the “Star Trek” incarnations. (Takei also has ten million Facebook followers.) He’s known for tweeting sharp, sometimes humorous, takes on politics, clearly leaning left, as well as regularly recognizing LGBTQ accomplishments. 

 

In 2019, after Donald Trump refused to denounce the Proud Boys during a presidential debate, Takei took to Twitter, proposing that the LGBTQ community take over #ProudBoys by using the hashtag and tweeting photos of men kissing. That would show what proud boys truly looked like. It worked. 

 

This week’s attention comes from a tweet opining that people who choose not to be vaccinated and wind up in hospital should not get priority care over others seeking treatment for equally urgent conditions.

The willfully unvaccinated who wind up in hospitals from Covid should not receive priority medical care over other very sick or injured people who are as much in urgent need of medical care.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 13, 2021

Provocative. It’s reflective of the palpable frustration regarding the rise in COVID cases yet again and the inability to stop the spread of variants in part because too many unvaccinated people continue to spread the coronavirus. The unvaccinated pose a continuing burden on the healthcare system and, while claiming their stand is, inter alia, an assertion of individual rights (it’s more complicated than that), causing the general public to face a regression in terms of their own freedoms (e.g., renewed travel restrictions; mask requirements reinstated) and affecting the livelihood of many service industry workers due to such measures as restaurant and bar closures. 

 

Many responded to Takei’s comment with wholehearted agreement, almost 40,000 liking his tweet and 9,000 retweeting it. I first ran across the tweet on Saturday morning when someone identifying as gay embedded Takei’s tweet and responded by saying this was a hideous, draconian proposition, akin to arguments during the AIDS crisis that gays shouldn’t receive empathy or care since those that got AIDS brought it on themselves.[1]

 

Oh, dear. Good point. Medical care does not judge. A lifelong smoker who gets lung cancer gets every possible treatment deemed effective. She is not tsk-tsked and told to wait until a nonsmoker with lung cancer is seen. An AIDS patient teetering toward hospice care does not wait longer as another patient in an equally dire medical condition is attended to. An addict who overdoses is not left if an unconscious person from a car accident is rolled in on a gurney.

 

These are the kind of ethical hypotheticals presented in university classes or on a Friday night as a group of philosophically minded hipsters smoke weed. Yes, we’ve heard that hospitals are struggling in treating and finding beds on account of increased admissions since the pandemic began. We’ve read about patients set up in hallways and even tents. Still, there are medical practitioners with different specialties and hospital units for different afflictions. The predicament Takei’s comment pertains to most would presumably involve patients in intensive care. Again, doctors won’t pit vaccinated COVID patients against the unvaccinated or someone with cancer against the antivaxxer person with COVID. Yes, in crisis situations in hospitals, certain cases take priority, but presumably this is based on how acute a patient’s needs are. Let’s hope, at least, that a scenario in which two patients with absolutely equal needs arrive in an ER with only one attending physician is indeed a hypothetical. Otherwise, I suppose it’s first come, first served. 

 

But as I was riding the elevator the next day, a flaw came to mind regarding the person who asserted that Takei’s suggestion was the equivalent to AIDS shaming. The smoker, the addict, the gay man who becomes ill requires care based on behavior alone. There is no vaccine for lung cancer, no vaccine for addictive disorders, no vaccine for AIDS. Presumably, if such vaccines existed, there would be similar frustration if a person particularly susceptible to an affliction didn’t take the vaccine and becomes ill. The initial behavior is not judged but the choice not to be vaccinated, a behavior or non-behavior itself, is what’s at issue. It’s a different level of culpability, heightening Joe Public’s frustration and likely contributing to a greater sense of regret from the patient himself. 

 

 No lie, I got light-headed just looking
 up photos of people getting vaccinated.

There are vaccines for COVID. True, we have no long-term research on any potential harm from taking it. Like EVERY OTHER vaccine, it is not 100% effective. Also, like every other vaccine or medication, there are potential side effects, some very serious. Just listen to the fast-talking listing of side effects, including death, in every medication commercial. I am taking daily meds with frightening short-term and long-term dangers, but I talk with my doctors, strongly resisting over several conversations, and then I acquiesce, choosing to trust the expert and rely on the overwhelming odds I’ll be all right. I am my own a medical problem. I tune out talk about vitamins, I am reticent to take any medication and I am terrified of needles. (It’s documented as a clinical phobia in my rather thick psychiatric file.) Still, I take my meds. I got vaccinated. (Sorry, vitamin D pill. I’ll do without.) For both shots, I asked the poor staffers, “What’s it like stabbing people all day?” Yes, I see needles as incredibly invasive and threatening. To be clear though, I was profusely apologetic for my wimpy behavior and I repeatedly expressed gratitude for their work.

 

People who aren’t vaccinated are impacting those of us who are. It’s not just antivaxxers who’ve engaged in questionable behaviors during the pandemic. It might not have been wise for anyone to walk around in indoor public spaces without a mask or attend cousin Rita’s wedding along with seventy other people. But a very high percentage of now-vaccinated people making these choices remain unaffected. The initial behaviors may be the same, but medical science, but the risks are far different in terms of both incidence and degree. 

 

Again, I think Takei’s tweet was a way of letting off steam and drawing attention to his social media platform. Many vaccinated people who are back to having to wear masks, putting off foreign travel and/or missing their shifts waiting tables for a low wage yelled, “Yeah!” and pressed the like button. I highly doubt his message made any unvaccinated person fret and rush out to get a shot. In fact, I suspect rhetoric like this causes antivaxxers to double down. No. Vaccine. Ever. Perhaps it’s a stance they’ll stick with till the day they die (hopefully due to old age, instead of this mutating coronavirus).

 

Like many, my frustration grows by the week, maybe even by the day. I also feel that getting closer to normality--some form of a freer “new normal”--is being impeded by the holdouts. How did we become so divided and stray so far from the initially universal notion of “We’re all in this together”?

 

Many of us have done what we were supposed to do, what we thought was for the greater public good and now we’re left to bang our heads against walls and “like” what Sulu says. The antivaxxers have received more than their share of airtime. Quite literally so. They make their own maddening and provocative statements. It goes both ways.

 

---

[1] Sorry, I’ve searched for the tweet and can’t find it, but I’m pretty sure I’m accurately saying the gist of it. If not, I defer to dearly missed Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella. 

DATING INDIFFERENCE

At the very beginning of 2020, before the Great Lockdown, I snoozed my profiles on traditional online dating sites. I was moving. I most certainly did not want to start a relationship with someone in Vancouver. In a post from that time, I’d explained that I wanted to do some sowing of my wild oats which I never did in my teens or twenties. When I came out in my mid-twenties, AIDS seemed to be wiping out the gay population and I didn’t think sex with a stranger was worth it. I had enough fear about being gay in the first place—possible bashing, losing my job (I worked with nuns), losing friends, being disowned by family (which, in retrospect, might not have been so bad). Back in the ’80s, “out and proud” was perhaps an aspiration for others, but I was just looking to survive. I never was one for setting lofty goals.

 

Okay, so back to 2020. MY mission: makeup sex, in the sense of experiencing a little of what I missed. I opened a profile on a hookup site and wound up meeting one guy who wasn’t a hook up at all. We dated for five months. It was nice as a casual yet close connection. When lockdown forced me to postpone or abandon travel and moving plans, I suppose the stakes became higher. I had to assess whether this guy, who was comfortable to be around, was long-term partner material. He wasn’t. Nice guy, but we had some fundamental differences in terms of values. 

 

I’ve been single for a full year and off all online sites for seventeen months—I closed down my profile on the hookup site when I the supposedly casual five-month relationship began. (I’m even worse at juggling than I am at setting lofty goals.) To say it’s been good to be single and off the dating scene is an understatement. 

 

So many of us who are single spend too much time thinking about relationship possibilities. We pine. We whine. We flirt. We get hurt. (Okay, my flirting is infinitely worse than my juggling or my goal setting. Call it nonexistent. But others, I’m told, flirt.) Our friends, particularly those who are coupled, say well-intended, but unhelpful things like: It’ll happen when you stop looking. Don’t try so hard; Maybe you’re being too picky. (Um, so are you saying I should lower my standards? Hello, rock. Wanna go out?); and You need to put yourself out there more. (Sure, let me simply turn off my lifelong INTROVERT button and suddenly become a different personality.) 

 

I can be quick to put myself down, but I know I did a lot of things right when I was on the dating scene. I had many odd or bad coffee dates that made for good blog posts, but I also had many occasions where the conversation flowed and things extended to a walk or dinner before I got told I was a really nice guy, but I didn’t set off any fireworks. (My fireworks skills? You guessed it. Not even worth buying bottle rockets or Roman candles. I’ve been afraid of fire ever since a sparkler boo-boo when I was five. Can’t even light a match. I will not be putting on a fireworks show for anyone.) I suspect some of this fireworks nonsense may have been on account I didn’t give off any pressing Let’s Have Sex vibes. I’m the quintessential guy next door. 

 

When you have a lot of WTF go-nowhere dates, you can either torture yourself with What’s Wrong with Me thinking, adopt a Screw You All, Shallow Gay Men stance or just wave a white flag and choose to knit an afghan or set off in search of a rare Light-footed Clapper Rail. (That’s a bird. Frankly, if I were a bird and I knew humans called me a Light-footed Clapper Rail, I’d go into hiding, too. Because clearly humans are weird.) I’ve swum in the What’s Wrong and the Screw You sewers more than a time or two, but I’ve yet to take up knitting or birdwatching. (I can only imagine the dangers that would come with me holding knitting needles and binoculars just bug my eyes. Hmm…I’m beginning to see why guys might quickly decide I’m not such a catch.)

 

For a year now, the self-criticism has been next to nil. Whining and pining? Wasted time. (Ryan Reynolds doesn’t count. I’m abundantly aware that he is still solidly straight…and married.) 

 

Lockdown and a global pandemic have made it a no-brainer to forgo dating. (Yes, this generously assumes I have much of a say in the prospect of dating.) I’d read how one of Canada’s top doctors encouraged sex with masks, but I was having enough challenges just putting on a mask so it didn’t cover up my eyes. (I know, I know. Such a catch!) I couldn’t get my head around the thought that the sweatiness under my mask would complement the sweatiness of sex. Different things. I’d also read a New York Times article about casual sex during coronavirus, but it just made me think people had their priorities out of whack. Perhaps I defaulted to some version of AIDS-era sense of caution. I wasn’t terribly fearful of getting COVID, but I didn’t want to be the one to pass on the virus or have it passed on to me and then to have it get passed on to someone far more vulnerable. For me at least, any personal agenda needed to be put on hold to give that “We’re All in This Together” mantra some weight instead of merely being a sign people post in windows.

 

I’ve come to realize I am happy being single. I’ve always known I enjoy time on my own but, just like 98% of us, I was raised to believe that becoming a couple was one of the milestones that made your life well-lived. As a man, bachelor has never sounded as judgemental as how women are labeled: spinster or cat lady. Still, this bachelor wasn’t ever going to be called a playboy and I’d had my wedding song picked when I was six. (“We’ve Only Just Begun” by The Carpenters, natch.) 

 

Being on my own does not make me a Have Not. I don’t need to be defensive about it just because others may project a void in my life. We have different life paths. One is not necessarily better than another. It’s what you make of the path you’re on. That’s as Oprah as I’ve ever sounded, but all this quiet time has allowed me to get more comfortable with where I’m at. The quiet has also reduced any tendency to compare myself with others I see going about their daily business since there was less of that going on in public. I stopped inferring some sense of happiness in couples I passed on the sidewalk (instead begrudging the fact they rarely walked single file for two seconds to allow more space as we came upon one another). I didn’t have opportunities to view a person having dinner alone in a restaurant as someone warranting pity. I have done this. I have felt this. I know I’m not the only one.

 

Things are opening back up again. For now. Who knows what may or may not happen when winter approaches. I’ve had both my vaccination shots. I know I can reactivate my dating profiles. It’s crossed my mind a few times over the past couple of weeks. It goes on my to-do list, but I don’t do it. It stays there along with Fix Closet Door and Clean Car Interior (so much coffee spillage).     

 

Yes, I can date again. Chat over coffee. Walk away with a funny or a maddening anecdote. Maybe even experience a firework-free spark. Maybe more. All I have to do is press one button on a dating site to make my profile public again. I can easily update things with some recent, acceptable photos of me looking smiley and sporty. It’s painless. The problem is, I haven’t figured out why. What do I want now, if anything? Is diving back into dating—or the possibility of it, at least—just a fallback habit? Gosh, it’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I’m supposed to do to “fix” this “problem” of being a single guy. 

 

I’ve had a good thing going for the past year. As an example, I just had a great weekend that had me smiling as I retired to bed Sunday night. When. I thought back on it, I realized I’d spent it entirely alone. I’d exchanged texts with some friends, three in Vancouver, one in Boston. I’d gone on a ten-hour solo hike, ascending two mountain peaks, I’d started my Sunday walking three hours in the rain and seeing how much an old neighborhood where I’d lived had changed. I read, I wrote, I watched a movie. I felt content the entire time. Not once did I think something was missing.

 

I don’t think this dating ambivalence arises from a sense of safety and I know it’s not fear that’s holding me back. Without the slightest bit of bitterness or drama, I wonder if I might just be done. I’ll give it some more thought, but I know that, for now at least, I’m happy being single. That’s a pretty wonderful takeaway from one odd year.

THEY WERE LOVED

This post is lengthy, but few of the words are mine. (My intro turned out to be longer than I anticipated, but I wanted to provide context.) I have written many times about AIDS, remembering when it was at a crisis level and continuing to support efforts toward helping persons with HIV and finding a vaccine and a cure for AIDS. I truly believe in a NEVER FORGET approach to recalling the human toll and the brilliant, compassionate individuals who died too soon…the average Joes as well. 

 

There are many people today who were born after the AIDS peak or were too young to know what was going on, blissful days of Power Rangers, “Moesha” and that dang Tickle Me Elmo. Many younger members of the LGBTQ community don’t have a full sense—perhaps even any sense—of the loss and how it spurred increased visibility, formalizing and broadening advocacy while rallying straight allies who had friends and relatives that were affected. These efforts are directly linked to an evolving activism leading to the greater freedoms we now enjoy (but must not take for granted).

 

A couple of months ago, I stumbled on an AIDS Memorial post somewhere online and I discovered that the original source was an Instagram account. I immediately followed the account (theaidsmemorial) and from then on, I’ve read daily tributes to people who have died from AIDS-related illnesses. On any given day, there are three or four posts—thus, I’ve read about two hundred posts so far. There are days when I brace before logging in, when I hope it will be three posts instead of four or, just maybe only two. I get teary when I read the tributes, always so heartfelt, often wrenching. Sometimes the tears flow. I smile every time as well, sometimes even laugh. Sometimes everything hits me at once. That saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never rung so true and when I look closely at the photos or, sometimes, photos, of the person. Most often, I see a sweetness in the individual. I also marvel at the big hair and now-dated fashion so many of us wore back in the day. It brings fond memories. There are some who unabashedly wear outlandish outfits and I think about what a larger-than-life character the person must have been. It may sound weird, but after I read each post, I make a point of winking at the person’s photo and saying his or her name. You are remembered. I honor you. It matters deeply to me.

 

The tributes are for lovers, friends, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, grandparents, cousins, coworkers, teachers and mentors. Many of the tributes are for gay men, but there are others for hemophiliacs, people who struggled with addictions, and people who acquired AIDS from reasons not specified. The people who are honored are from all over the world (though most often from the U.S.). Some posts are glowing, others make no attempt to deify their loved ones, but choose to portray them for the loved, but flawed humans we all are. 

 

I am taken aback by how young almost all of the people were. So few made it to my current age (fifty-six). There are many who died in the ’80s and early ’90s, particularly scary times when the hate was the greatest, when many families disowned them, when treatments seemed as debilitating as the disease and when causes of death were cancer and pneumonia. I am heartbroken when I read about those who died between 1994 and 1996 when we were on the cusp of treating patients with more successful, life-extending drugs. If only they could have held on a little bit longer. If only the disease hadn’t been so savage. I am also surprised by how many died in the twenty-first century, including 2020.

 

Yes, we must continue to make AIDS a health priority.

 

I encourage you to follow the Instagram account. Skip the posts some days if it becomes too much. Maybe just look at the pictures and the name. Check in only occasionally if that makes the most sense for you. There is no prize for who reads the most posts. The point is to understand and humanize the toll that AIDS has taken and to simply remember.

 

What follows are snippets from posts I’ve read, each triggering various emotions and thoughts while also reminding me of things I lived and witnessed. I have pared down comments but none of the writing is edited.

 

REMEMBER ME:

 

Patrick Lamar Taylor (October 8, 1963-December 24, 1994): Around 1982, I first saw a story about gay men dying from a mysterious illness in New York and San Francisco. I don’t think I thought much about it at the time. I never imagined that my best friend from the age of 10 would die from a disease later named AIDS on Christmas Eve, 12 years later…[As kids] Patrick and I became inseparable. We loved all the same things as boys…As we grew older, it became apparent we also shared a love for men…Unfortunately, Patrick’s family was not as accepting as mine. When he was 16, he was shipped off to a mental hospital in Georgia. There he was subjected to conversion therapy and shock treatment…I will forever miss my beautiful friend. I wish I could have been there for him. I wish he could have held on until much better treatments were available. I will always wonder where life would have taken him and where he would be today.

 

*

Tommy Pace [no dates provided]: I think of my dear, wickedly funny, brilliant Tommy Pace. Tommy’s malady was the cruelest. It started slowly, with the smallest Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions I first spied in 1984 as he peeled off his gloves after a performance of “Naked Brunch.” It rapidly progressed. 

[Another friend] recalled a time Tommy was taken to a dog show…As a Dalmation pranced in front of him, he whispered with unbearable black humor, “I have spots too.”

He radiated inner turbulence. Conversations became fleeting; he would abruptly terminate the exchange and retreat. The lesions on his arm were soon matched by a single raised purple lesion on his nose. Tommy covered it up with makeup. Until there was a crop of them. The lesions, now swollen to almost double their size, soon covered his whole face, obscuring his once-glistening eyes. Tommy became unrecognizable.

Through the course of the epidemic, I had come to realize the process of death would either bring people to a higher or lower place—bringing out the more elevated spirits or the darkest demons…Tommy, once the sweetest, gentlest soul, became monstrous. We all tried to turn the other cheek and form a support circle around our dear friend…A trip to the movies attracted unwanted attention. No matter how big the hats and oversized Jackie O sunglasses were, or how many scarves he wrapped around his neck, people would point and whisper…And he knew it. When he caught people staring, he would howl in the most guttural, brutish voice, “Don’t look at me, DON’T LOOOOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEE.” It was heartbreaking. 

 

* 

Thomas E. Shields (May 9, 1952-April 3, 1987): Mr. Shields singled me out and treated me like I was his child. And I completely adored him…A favorite memory was when we would make some sort of mistake in class and he’d say out lout (almost singing) “I can’t go for that” and the entire class would respond “No can do!”…I’ve told my children stories about Mr. Shields over and over. I’ve shared with them and now with you…this exceedingly talented, intelligent, kind, generous and gentle man I was sincerely blessed to have known…even for a short while.

 

*

This is my beautiful mom, Catherine Herpfer (April 22, 1959-August 15, 2017)…The effortless hostess…No cancer, no pneumonia, her body just grew tired and stopped working after years of undiagnosed, untreated HIV…My mother was a substance abuse counselor. She was active, ate clean, surfed and paddle boarded any chance she could get near the water…Mom was diagnosed with AIDS on April 30, 2017. She had been unable to walk since Thanksgiving, a complication of the undiagnosed virus that had been in her system. She had been to every kind of doctor to find the cause of her paralysis and when she was finally tested for HIV, the test results never came back to the doctor and he didn’t follow up…I watched my mom waste away from a vibrant, energetic, force of nature to a weak, frail, shadow of herself. I’m still sorting through the broken pieces of my heart…All I know is that I will live the rest of my life honoring the things she held dear, the best qualities she possessed and advocate as best I can. I love you mommy.

 

*

AIDS does not discriminate against anyone. It took a whole generation of men in the hemophilia community. My brother Eric Ryan (Rick) (May 10, 1963-December 18, 1993) was my best friend. My brother William Ryan (Bill) (May 12, 1969-May 26, 1992) had just made his 23^rd birthday. Both were great men as were ALL their wonderful friends that went with them.

 

*

My sister Dorothy (aka Nicole) and her husband Jason both died from AIDS, Jason in 1987 and Dorothy in 1989. They’re very missed.

 

*

Jaime Jesus Jimenez (May 18, 1963-October 27, 1995): That’s us [in the posted photo] in 1990…madly in love. Jaime was the only man I ever fell in love with. He was insanely beautiful, inside and out. The stories are endless but one that I cannot erase is bathing Jaime at his weakest and in the last stages of his illness. That very moment, looking at each other, knowing this was it. I felt something shift in my chest. It was my heart literally aching. Fuck I miss him.

 

*

Marty Donnelly: I accompanied Marty’s casket on the flight from Chicago to Sioux Falls and in the hearse to Cavour…When arriving at a small, local hotel where his family had gathered, an uncle, sort of the family patriarch said, “I understand Marty died from cancer, ah?” I froze. Even in death, so many of our loved ones had to hide their truths.

 

*

My brother Rion Planty (May 10, 1974-March 2, 2005) lost his battle with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). He contracted the virus due to his almost non existent immune system.

Rion tested positive with HIV sometime in 2002 but he was so afraid of the stigmatism that he stayed quiet and didn’t tell anyone. He lived in [such] fear of anyone finding out that he did nothing to take care of his health…

So many “if” scenarios have gone through my mind every day for the past 16 years but I know in my heart that if Rion had taken care of his health from the moment he tested HIV positive, he would still be with us today. I truly believe it was the stigma of the disease that took his life, not HIV.

 

*

An example of the unique personalities lost:

Alan Walker (July 6, 1951-May 13, 1996): In between acting gigs and working in bookstores, he collected stamps and created elaborate paper doll folios. Often these paper cut-outs centered around the Miss Universe beauty contest, sometimes in evening wear, sometimes in swimsuits. Each character had a complete bio. He could describe in detail the background and attributes of each of these invented women.

For my 30^th birthday in 1989, Alan created a Miss Universe book for me, each participant inspired by an aspect of my life: Miss Connecticut, Miss California, Miss Sweden, Miss Poland, Miss France, Miss Arizona, Miss South Dakota. They were illustrated in their evening wear and were accompanied by a short prose poem. It’s one of the most amazing pieces of art I’ve ever seen…AIDS was particularly cruel to Alan. He suffered terribly in the final weeks of his life. The medical establishment treated him more like a science [experiment] than an ailing human being. Fortunately, I don’t remember him in this state but as the handsome, strapping, charming, boyish angel he was and still is.  

 

*

Ending on a hopeful note, while pointing out there is more to be done:

Ronald Dennis: I found out in 1984 that I was HIV positive when the ELISA test was released which detected exposure to the virus. In 1986, my symptoms began, weight loss, dripping night sweat, flu-like symptoms of the worst kind, on and off until I was hospitalised with “full blown” AIDS in 1990…I held on until 1996 when antiretrovirals arrived. They saved my life and I didn’t die at 43. 

99% of the men of my generation are long ago deceased. My Black male friends are ALL GONE…I held on and outed my HIV status rather than hide in shame. It was hell what I lived through but here I am! I lived on and here I am at 76…I endured: Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) four times in three years. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, twice, along with a host of AIDS related ailments…As the Senior Advisor at APLA for Project Rise addressing medication adherence among the young Black men in Los Angeles, the very same issues of shame, secrecy and resistance to taking their medication persist in 2021.