A WALK IN THE PARK

Beautiful September day! Sun shining, temperatures warm but merciful thanks to a gentle ocean breeze. Perfect day for a walk in Stanley Park. This walk is more special, more than just an extension of summer. This is AIDS Walk Vancouver. It’s a far cry from the chilly, rainy day last year when I walked alone along with a threadbare entourage dedicated to the cause. This time I have a good friend with me and the larger group, while nothing the size of the hordes from twenty years ago, is boosted by a human injection as well.

                             

 

 

                             

 If you are a teenager now, it is unlikely that you knew us well. We are your shadow uncles, your angel godfathers, your mother’s or your grandmother’s best friend from college, the author of that book you found in the gay section of the library. We are characters in a Tony Kushner play, or names on a quilt that rarely gets taken out anymore.

       --David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

AIDS Walk numbers will never match the masses from a generation ago. That’s a good thing. Great strides have been made in terms of research, treatment and other care issues. Still, I feel that those of us who lost and feared the most back then have to recommit to the cause. Without the urgency, the front-page headlines and the sensational letters to the editor, people less impacted by AIDS are no longer stirred to action. They have moved on to bike rides for cancer and opportunities to garner several dozen YouTube views from getting cold water poured on their heads.

I am one who believes each person’s charitable priorities should be private—only you, the organization and the taxman need to know. I will, however, continue to post about my renewed commitment to supporting AIDS charities to encourage you to consider whether there might be something in your wallet that can go to a local AIDS entity. The competition among charities nowadays is fierce. All the more reason why we must keep AIDS in focus.

It was an exquisite irony: Just when we stopped wanting to kill ourselves, we started to die. Just when we were feeling strength, it was taken from us.

 –David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing

This year I walk in honor of my friends Farrell and José. Farrell was a guy I befriended in a tennis class in Dallas in the late 1980s. We formed a tennis connection that evolved into a friendship, albeit one that was limited by our reserved dispositions. Only after he visited me in L.A. did he come out to me in a letter, the self-hate as a lifelong Bible Belt native pouring out on the page. By telling you I’m gay, I know you must detest me. I wrote back to say that what I truly detested was the fact both of us felt so compelled to live(?) in the closet. The friendship became stronger but not enough for him to tell me he was sick with complications from AIDS. I only found out in late 1994 when a letter I mailed was Returned to Sender with “Deceased” stamped on the front. There was no funeral service.

José was a friend I met in Malibu while I was going to law school. He owned an independent clothing store in a large space that is now a Banana Republic. José was a jovial individual, the guy whom everyone in my group of club-going gay friends kidded, sometimes mercilessly. He played into it, soaking up any kind of attention. He was generous to a fault, sweetness to the core. In 1995, after I’d moved to Vancouver, a friend called to say José had died suddenly. A brain aneurism. Two summers ago, as I had dinner with that friend, the real story came forth. He’d died of AIDS, but the shame was too great. None of us knew. He retreated and died alone.

For both Farrell and José, the shame was too great. It saddens me to think they couldn’t reach out. I know that each died completely alone.

This is part of the past devastation from AIDS. This is what I cannot forget. This is why walking remains imperative. Circumstances are drastically different, but I need persons with HIV or AIDS to know they will continue to be supported. I know that shame remains. I read it in the dating profiles of men who are HIV+ and I occasionally see it manifested as anger on Twitter.

This is not over. AIDS still matters.

WALK ON

I awoke frequently in the night, aware that rain was pelting my roof, but there was a greater consciousness that made sleep elusive. My mind thought of Stephen, of Don, of Farrell, of José. When the alarm finally sounded, I dared not snooze. I had a ferry to catch.

Before heading out, the dog needed his morning walk. He looked at me between piddles, seeming to beg me to turn back. Rain has never been his thing. Definitely not a water dog.

I knew as I sailed, then drove toward Vancouver that I could have stayed home. I could have tried to get a rebate on rest, maybe head into the work week with less pronounced bags under my eyes. Why slog things out in the rain? All my money had already been accepted online. No one would know the difference.

But I’d been absent for too long, perhaps as long as seventeen years. People had fought, even emerged victorious in the battle with AIDS, but I had lost my way. This AIDS Walk is intended to be a rebirth, a renewed commitment to causes far greater than my own hapless dating life. Thank goodness.

I’d like to think I have remained concerned and connected regarding the struggles and advances pertaining to AIDS. In truth, however, I had become complacent. Deeply sympathetic, indeed, whenever a news article surfaced online, excited to hear about people living HIV+ without ever progressing to the point of having AIDS, but I’d gotten consumed by a career that mattered, a writing passion and a couple of little dogs who lapped up every minute I gave them. Admittedly, AIDS lost its urgency.

There was a time when most of my sleepless nights were due to AIDS. I read Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On and raged over governments, religious institutions and medical providers that denied the crisis, hailed the epidemic as God’s wrath, underfunded research studies or got mired in political maneuvering. I feared intimacy as my mind twisted Silence = Death into Sex = Death. I consciously lost contact with an aunt after she ranted about me wasting my time volunteering with AIDS Project Los Angeles. I drew strength from my mother’s negativity, betting that I couldn’t handle being a buddy for persons with AIDS since I had a history of fainting over films in high school Biology and during standard hearing tests. There was a time when AIDS made me stronger. In fact, AIDS made me a better man.

Somehow I lost that within a year of moving from Los Angeles to Vancouver. The move left me underemployed and in debt, but it also threw my priorities out of whack. Having left my alcoholic ex back in La-la Land, I could now flit from tea dance to dance club to drag show with a new group of friends whose behavior I didn’t have to monitor or correct. I never became a wild boy, never went through a sowing-his-seeds stage, but I let frivolity take the forefront.

Things started to change this summer, first with a stop at the AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and further with an extended stay in L.A.—and my alcoholic ex’s disclosure that he was now HIV+. I recommitted myself. For starters, I pledged to participate in the Vancouver AIDS Walk.

So rain could not keep me away. Putting it aside for another year might push the issue away for good—actually for bad.

And so I parked my car and sloshed a half mile along the seawall toward the starting area. When I’d first participated in an AIDS Walk twenty-two years ago in Los Angeles and even during that first year in Vancouver, I’d always felt a rush as so many headed toward the start. This morning was radically different. I seemed to walk alone. There were a few other fools walking or running, but they had other agendas.

I am not the only one who grew complacent.

To be sure, the constant rain may have discouraged dozens, but weather cannot account for the light numbers roaming the muddy field encased by opportunistic food trucks and corporate sponsor tents. Where once I would have been guided to a short string of alphabetized letters wherein my last name fell, I was instead ushered to one volunteer who searched through a single alphabetized list of online registrants. Four pages of names. There are far more names on Vancouver’s AIDS Memorial wall.

There is complacency and then there is charitable competition, perhaps even donor burnout. On this day alone, Stanley Park was also the site of an Ismaili Walk and a cycling event for schizophrenia. As well, the downtown core played host to a First Nations Reconciliation Walk. When governments fall short in supporting the neediest citizens, competition for dollars becomes fierce and all the more vital.

Not sure what caused the magical firefly effect,
but I'd liketo think I did not walk alone.

It did not take long for the crowd to thin out as we began the walk. When I wasn’t navigating puddles and green globs of goose poop, I had plenty of time to honor the sweet dreamer that was Stephen, the fatherly orchid grower that was Don, the conservative tennis pal that was Farrell and the goofy, lovable José. All gone far too soon.

My shoes sounded a squishy, squeaky beat to my march. Water climbed the legs of my jeans, passing my knees and stopping just short of the pant pockets. Ducks splashing in puddles on a field provided further distraction. Around Stanley Park’s Lost Lagoon, I glanced at two plaques intended to educate the public about local wildlife and habitats. The first read. “Everyone needs a home”, the second, “To each their own”. Twenty years ago, these might have been the messages on placards carried by walkers.

I did not linger within the temporary tent town at walk’s end. Glancing in that direction, it seemed nobody did. I slogged back to the car, envious of a little boy in rain boots who gleefully jumped in the biggest puddle he could find. How is it that I have lived here nineteen years and never bought a pair of puddle stompers?

As I sat in the driver’s seat, door open, finally sheltered by the Granville Street Bridge overhead, I dumped water from my soggy Converse shoes and wringed even more from my socks. I drove barefoot with the heater on as eau de wet sock filled the car. All a temporary inconvenience.

Meanwhile, the daily struggles, setbacks and, yes, successes surrounding AIDS continue. I hope to have a better sense of things in the year to come. And I’ll be back for AIDS Walk 2014, rain or shine.

GROVE IS IN THE HEART

Last time I visited San Francisco, I did what all gay men do: I cruised thousands and thousands of shapes, sizes and colors. Of pumpkins. I’m not using a euphemism. I’m really talking pumpkins.

That’s what I get when I stay with my one San Fran friend, a straight married woman. It was October 2008 and she wanted to photograph the uncarved gourds at the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival which is a far bigger draw than you might imagine. If it had been in Cleveland or Pittsburgh or Boise, the folksy festival might have been a big hit with me. But gay men don’t fly to San Francisco for pumpkin postcards.

Five years later, I needed to do something different. I chose to visit during the week when my friend would be working during the day (and when certain veggies are still in the early stages of the growing season).

After wishing her a great day at work, I got in the car and departed suburbia with Google Map directions to take me to Castro Street.

Of course, Castro isn’t exactly a hopping place at 10 a.m. on a Thursday. Like my friend, most people are at work—or sleeping off a wild Wednesday night. (Vacation or not, I don’t think I’d have much in common with the wild weekday set anyway.) My dog Hoover and I walked along the Castro, peeked in all the closed clubs, oohed over all the rainbow flags—Look at all the colors!—and then got back in the car to marvel at the roadway ups and downs while I fretted over all the stop signs impractically positioned in the middle of steep inclines. Surely car insurance costs more in Frisco.

We headed for my second Google Map destination: Golden Gate Park. This would be a place my dog could truly enjoy. (In truth, those rainbow flags did not impress him at all. Perhaps dogs really are color blind.) The destination on this visit to the park was the National AIDS Memorial Grove. I am ashamed to admit that AIDS has fallen off my radar in recent years and I am willing to bet this is a trend amongst gay men and the general public. We’ve become complacent. People traded in their red ribbons for yellow rubber bracelets—at least until a certain someone had a sit-down with Oprah.

Medical and charitable causes are competing more than ever for the same dollars. There are runs, walks, bike rides, dinners and auctions every weekend for one charity or another. The donors are suffering too, partly due to the economy and partly due to Bleeding Heart Burnout. With everyone from grocery store clerks to sign-toting girls’ baseball team members asking for donations, it has gotten easy to say no. I don’t even put my head down or feel a pang of guilt.

But AIDS shouldn’t be lumped in with all the other causes, not for someone like me who came out during the height of the AIDS crisis and whose participation in the L.A. AIDS Walk made him The Gay One in his law school class. (There were others, of course, but I was the outed one at ultra-conservative Pepperdine University.)

It was both a relief and a disappointment to visit the AIDS memorial without anyone else around. Indeed, I had the opportunity for quiet contemplation, reflecting on how AIDS served as a death sentence for so many proud, defiant people who dutifully took their AZT and dealt with the side effects of diarrhea, nausea and unhealthy looking tans while continuing to face extreme weight loss, blotched skin and an increasing dependence of canes, walkers and wheelchairs. In the early ‘90s, we all knew who had AIDS; people could only conceal it a month or two at most.

Undisturbed, I read the inscriptions on every rock and honored the named and the nameless. I remembered my friends who were part of my AIDS Project Los Angeles Buddy group, My first love arose directly from the AIDS crisis as he was a coordinator of APLA’s Buddy Program and my facilitator pulled the two of us on the dance floor in a matchmaking gesture at a volunteer appreciation event. I recalled the AIDS quilt, watching the documentary (the Oscar-winning “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” narrated by Dustin Hoffman and featuring a haunting score by Bobby McFerrin) and seeing a part of it on exhibit. More than anything, I remembered Stephen and Don, the two men I connected with, at first solely because of their AIDS status since I was assigned as their Buddy. Stephen, in particular, remains a strong part of my life twenty-one years after his death.

Rocks form Dry Creek, a representation of what we
lost due to AIDS. 

Reflection ultimately turned to tears and I sat on one of the dedicated benches to weep as my dog looked on, perplexed, licking my leg in comfort.

Here’s where the disappointment came in. It saddened me even more to realize no one interrupted my thoughts. Granted this was a working day for most, but Golden Gate Park is a tourist draw which attracts 13 million people per year. On a mild summer day, how could I possibly have this section of the park all to myself?

Meandering through the grove, I ultimately came upon a clearing, an open field area bordered by unused handball courts. I sought out a restroom

and then tried to stroll back through the grove. Due to my complete lack of direction, I couldn’t find the grove again. The dog was content to amble aimlessly as I attempted to walk back in toward the start of the memorial. I wound up far off the mark, but signs ultimately guided me back to the car. I stopped once more at the entrance of the memorial, this time disturbed as a horde of tourists on Segway PTs gathered to listen to a guide explain the memorial. Finally, some recognition. The Segway tour felt tacky but no more so than hooking up with a grocery chain to peddle your cause.

Even though it was only early afternoon, I headed back for suburbia. I was done being a gay tourist for the day, not on account of getting lost. No, I’ve become blasé about that sort of predicament. But I’d broken another form of blasé and felt more empowered because of it.

Turns out daytime San Francisco isn’t much different from daytime Cleveland, Pittsburgh or Boise. Still my dog is well walked and I am thankful I found the car. And no pumpkins! My vacation standards are getting lower all the time. Still, San Francisco does have the AIDS Memorial Grove and that makes all the difference. It is what I needed, so much more than an overpriced glass of ice with a dash of Dewar’s, even more than a cheap ogling from a well-dressed octogenarian.

I’ll end this post with a dedication to Stephen and a quote inscribed on a stone wall at the grove:

May we all remember our lives are not measured by the number of years and days we exist

but by what we accomplish while we do live and the good we may render our fellow man. 
             –Henry Wells