We Jews are big on remembering, especially the painful parts. This earns us a judgment of being "whiney" and that's unfair. We do not have our heads buried in the sand. Joy and suffering are both parts of life. They have to be celebrated and remembered, respectively.
In my own life, I have not been touched by the AIDS crisis in the same way it has affected people just a few years older than me. I have had my losses from a distance. But I have had them, and of the 77,000 AIDS deaths in New York City, here are just a few of them.
Before I was out to my parents. Before I was ever in love. Before a lot of things, I knew Hal. I first participated in Gay Circles, a gay men's discussion group, in 1986. Ah, 1986. Back when ketchup was a federally funded vegetable and Reagan would answer questions about apartheid with answers about Nicaragua.
Hal was our facilitator and one of the more interesting and animatd members of the group. He told us a lot about himself, in a very candid fashion. He was really something, actually. One of my favorite stories involved his love of skiing. As a youth, he went to every ski trip available, and asked questions later. In seventh grade, he and a friend discovered, too late, that the trip they were on was sponsored by a Christian fundamental group. They were Jewish. Once this became known, they were treated coolly, and given a cold attic room. One night, the group leader told them all how God sat in a chair and had the people who would be saved around him in a circle. One of the kids asked, "what happens to the Jews? Hal replied, "Who do you think sold God the chair?"
When I moved to Manhattan I didn't know a lot of people, so I thought of calling him. John Miller, who was in my first group, and by then in charge of Gay Circles, told me Hal had just died. The memorial service was the next night. So I went. There were a lot of people there. It's hard to imagine, knowing so many people, and having them all show up for your service.
I knew David through a friend. He was a founder of a group called Southerners. It was for and about people from the South who are basically living up here in exile. For all the bitchiness and nonsense that often accompanies gay men in their attempts to cover fragility and distress and tensions that accompany our daily lives, David was not like that at all. He was always friendly. One of those people I never got to know well, but was always happy to see and talk with then I ran into him. And vice versa, I hope.
Imagine the shock and disconnection when Tony at one of the Center Dances, pointed me to a flyer. It was an outdated notice of David's AIDS-related death. It's a strange thing, finding out someone who know and like is dead, and finding it on a flyer. I guess that's what obituaries are about, though. Still, it was a shock. First that he was gone, and second that I was so disconnected from it all.
For a year or two I was a member of the Knights Wrestling Club. Imagine that, a gay wrestling club. Actually, of all the groups I have been involved in, they were by far the nicest bunch of guys over all. And the women who were in the Club got along with us and we with them. It was an opportunity to be involved in a sport and not be called a faggot. After practices and meets, we would go eat. That was a big part of our activities, actually.
It was in the Knights that I met Julio. He was strapping fellow who was not a man of many words. Not many that I remember, anyway. He was very good at cracking your spine for you, as needed on request. Whenever we went to eat and I was undecided, he would tell me what to get. It wasn't like he was just advising, but he knew what I wanted when I didn't. He was also big into butter. One time he made a lasagna for a friend's dinner, and even that contained a few sticks of butter. The birthday cake he made was also full of butter. In Julio's world, you could never have enough butter.
For all his strength and ability, he was dead a year or two later. A mutual friend told me about it. He returned a year after going away, a mere ghost of his former self. Denial kept him from seeking help, and he went home to die. My memories of him are vague. Picking me up and adjusting my back. Order a chef salad for me. Having a close relationship with his mother and grandmother. And gone. Another loss from a distance. Unwitnessed but felt.
Mr. Stamler was my fifth grade teacher. He was the cool teacher. Of the three available to us, he was the one you wanted to have. He was the one who let kids take a little responsibility for their actions, move about more freely, and participate more. He was the one whose class went to Washington DC every year, and did innovative things to raise money, like have a little store set up in our classroom, or put on a play.
It was not all that great for me, though. Over time, he became yet another disappointing teacher, someone I remember less than fondly. I had always been the odd one out the last one chosen, the first one denigrated. This was fairly obvious. Not that he was actively antagonistic, but he ignored some of the obvious problems in my life, and far from one of those teachers "you never forget because they made a difference." At one point, he must've said something very discouraging, because I remember, in ninth grade, when I was doing very well in school, I came back to my elementary school to confront him with my success. He didn't recall his discouraging comments.
Not soon thereafter, I found out he was gay. My friend's mother was the PTA president at the elementary school and apparently, instead of just having to class mothers on the DC trip, he wanted to bring along Andy. Apparently this was his boyfriend. This was a shock. After all, he was the cool single guy living in Manhattan. He was the teacher everyone wanted to have. He lived by himself and had a bumpersticker at home that said, "Fuck Communism."
A few years ago my mother said he died of AIDS. So I'll never know what his insight into me was at the young age. Was I the class faggot he once was, or the one he tormented himself at a similar age. I might have looked him up one day for that conversation. I will never know now. I do know that the next year, my teacher was the swishy flambuoyant type, and he took and interest in me, and encouraged me. His observations are something I have in writing.
I had had a low voice, and he could barely hear me, so he moved me closer to the front, and worked at it. Within six months, he said "Seth is speaking up to the other boys and no longer just taking it." There were probably several reasons for this, but he became the teacher I never forgot. Boy, if either of them could see me now. I am not the quiet, shy type anymore, and everyone's sick of me speaking up. I don't know what happened to Mr. Coleman, but I hope he's okay, or that he didn't suffer unduly if he isn't.
What AIDS has left me with is the hollow disconnected feeling. The amplified feeling of being in a parallel universe, in which I am safe from both the sickness and the suffering, but prevented from feeling the full impact of the disease. Perhaps my volunteering at Callen-Lorde will help integrate me more into this aspect of our lives.
Life is more than being safe. It's about experiencing everything, good and bad. My safety has not made me feel protected, and these death notices after the fact and from afar have left me feeling... at a loss for words. AIDS Quilts and Names Projects and Tree of Life events leave me grieving, but for what and whom?
All I can do is advise myself: Do more. Learn more. Reach out more.
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