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0116
Family
He’s dying.
… I did want to start this off with
something a little more poetic. I was thinking along the lines, ‘Some of us
have an uncomfortable familiarity with death. Some of us are actually quite
comfortable with it.’ The evocation of Thanatos is difficult to pull off, but
the gravity of the subject almost demands a certain amount of dramatics and
theatre to give its due. Death has always been a powerful topic for me. I don’t
know what put it in my head, but I was always aware of it and contemplating it.
Of course it requires a kind of bravado with its introduction.
But reality is so much less
romantic. When I started to write out all the purple prose, I couldn’t deny the
trite quality of the words. Death, when it sits with you at the dinner table
(Tuesday, 3 a.m.), is neither grandiose nor conspicuous. It is silent,
omnipresent, and factual.
Alan is dying. There is no other
appropriate way to start this.
I apologize in advance for
gratuitous elipses.
Who is Alan? That
is… hard to explain.
Alan is a bit of a small enigma to
me. I don’t know who the man is by personal experience. Just the things I’ve
pieced together between what I’ve been told by Matt, and by Alan himself. There
is a magical grandeur to the way Alan talks, and that makes everything seem so
unreal as he describes it. Studio 54. Stonewall. Scott’s murder. The death of
Lily. Mini mansions in Florida, monk-like forest retreats in the redwood. Cake
baking, college professoring, high school teaching, suicide counseling. From stalwart
activism to the callousness of AIDS, I’m really not sure what to make of it or
him. I have asked him a few times if I could write his memoires for him- let
him dictate, and I’ll type. He may not have realized how serious I was, but I
know how serious the answer was when he said no each time. It’s a shame. He is
the last of his tribe, and the oral tradition will die with him. And his final
oratory always circles back to a tender concept that is harrowing my soul: Family.
I had this
sort of novel idea not too long ago that I don’t think I was supposed to be born
in this time. That I should’ve been born in the Great War era, or WWII.
Something more emotionally restrictive and repressive. Because I thrive in
stress, and I thrive off strife. If not back then, I should’ve been a country
kid. Worked on a ranch or something. I feel like I belong in a culture that
makes you fear being in love with someone. Makes that connection more real.
Makes that family more real.
Alan comes from an era like that. He
was a country kid from a generation that it didn’t quite matter where you were anyways. To be gay was to be constantly
aware that everyone- especially those you knew personally- was a threat. And in
his youth, he packed up and bolted with a slew of other teenagers and made it
to New York City. He forged relationships in a strange world where people loved
each other in a way that I don’t think we can understand in this time. Where
relationships were literally bound be each others’ blood, occasionally
post-mortem.
He has said that people just aren’t
as open as they used to be. As loving. Nowadays, you must fit into specific
parameters. Between 18-30, skinny to fit build, twinks or hunks only. Some of
us know that usual.
And I’m inclined to agree with him.
I think the apps are the final nail in a slowly crafted coffin that constricts
social intercourse to pre-conceived notions that come with the almighty Google.
If you can search for something and receive it instantly, and put yourself out
there on this magical device that originates this power, you inherit a sense of
entitlement that can’t be matched. How dare I message you, cute boy, when your
profile specifically says no Latinos (although I’m white). I should’ve known
that you deserve only the best, which is what you’re asking for. Or something.
The finesse and grace of going up to
someone you don’t know and saying hi- and especially welcoming someone who does so- feels lost. And granted I am new to
the scene where we do these kinds of things with each other. But my crash
course has given me a series of hard lessons that illustrate a pattern of
contempt for anyone who dares speak before being digitally scanned first. Even
at the bar, I see everyone on their phones, checking the Grindr, Scruff,
etcetera (myself included). This emptiness, along with pretentiousness coupled
with that absurd twat-like attitude that has been cropping up like crazy in
every gay male I know under 30 (and then some), is driving me insane.
I want something more. I want
something powerful. Visceral. Bloody. I don’t yearn for the suffering of ages
passed, but I do recognize that it brought out a carnal and passionate
necessity for love that just doesn’t seem to exist anymore… And I lament that.
I would like to believe I can empathize with Alan, despite having never really
felt that myself.
But Alan is dying. And I don’t know
who Alan really is. I just know who I have come to known him as. And he feels
so far away, even when he’s across the table from me enjoying my stupid humor
and complimenting my insecure virtues.
Alan is dying. The last of his clan
of thirty plus some men and women, who have died from all manner of horrors.
Mostly AIDS. He cared for them when the hospitals wouldn’t. He cared for his
second husband to his dying breath. Alan loved them all. A kind of love that I
don’t see in natural families, with their defacto expectations placed between
parents, children, and siblings. Alan’s love was shared freely with those who
earned it through epic loss…
Alan loves effortlessly, and shared
that same love freely with me. And now I am fearing losing him.
There are
some things that Alan has said he hopes I’ll achieve:
Learn to relax.
Love who you are and love where you’re
at.
Love unconditionally.
That last one
is what is hooking me up at 0204 in the morning… I just got out of a convoluted and
traumatizing relationship. It was wonderful in spurts, but had a miasmic
undertone of dread. And this guy has inspired the absolute best and worst of
me. Feelings I haven’t seen in a very long time. Since I discovered I’m very
much like my father, and enjoy hurting things. Breaking things.
I have spent the better part of the
last three months trying to outwit whatever doom this relationship had in store
for me. I have spent the last two weeks of post-break up (and weeks before
seeing it coming) trying to wrestle into a defiant, steadfast, superior
position. Something to survive it. And that has made me a tinge crueler and apathetic
than I would prefer to be…
When Alan told me he hoped I would
learn to love unconditionally, I realized there is no reason I can’t do that.
No reason I can’t do that for the ex. What could he possibly do to me? Or I to
him? It’s over. And it’s supposed to be. We were horrible together, and we hurt
each other constantly. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t just love him
honestly for who he is, and all the wonderful qualities that he has.
I have always had a talent for
seeing the good in people. I’ve learned over the past three years to accept
that I see the worst, too; and to blind eye that is to ask for a sudden stab in
the back where you willingly can’t see. But I am stronger now, and I was always
strong enough to survive those attacks. I used to love that part of me- the
part that loved everything like a stupid, blissfully ignorant child. And I want
it back.
Tomorrow, I take this guy to the
airport, and it’s going to be our last goodbye, unless fates decide otherwise.
He’s going to stay a friend; he’s enshrined on Facebook. I want to embrace this
guy with an unconditional love. And I want to embrace life that way for the
rest of my own. To love effortlessly. To have a family. Family.
Family.
A significant portion of who I am
today I owe to video games. Especially FFVII. Aerith’s death alone transformed
me in ways I can’t describe. It taught me bushido, sociopathy, government
corruption, jihad, hope, and family.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever
get those normal people. You can’t be born into a family. Families are made by
broken people, gifting pieces of themselves that no longer can be used as spare
parts to make others whole. Sharing those lost portions of our souls, we become
One. Misshapen, and with technicolouring. But one.
Families are born when your best
friend becomes a monster, ruthlessly attacks you and your other friends, to put
him out of his misery; you inherit his daughter. Families are born when you
wake to discover that you were created without compassion and neglected until
you were later useful; you become the inherited child. Families are born
between orphans, abused kids, rape victims, and conartists.
Family doesn’t exist without tears.
Without blood. Without hate. Without violence. Without martyrdom. Without a
love that is proven in loss- the greatest possible loss.
Alan has experienced all of these
things. And I can’t see it. I can feel it. Alan knows family the way I do. Alan
had a family once. And he’s all that’s left. And in this day and age, I don’t
know if I’ll ever be able to experience that… Melodramatic and ridiculous as it
may be, I don’t think I can ever have that.
Alan loves
everyone unconditionally. He’s not perfect; he has his bitterness, his naiveté,
and his errors in judgement. He hurts people with his malignant upsets, and is
hurt by them all the same. And the closer he gets to the eternal sleep, the
more extreme our reactions to the subtlest of his changes and decisions.
But he makes the effort to love
unconditionally.
And as Death looms over him,
remorseless but amicable- a companion of sorts, willing to pay the fare across
Lethe and keep good conversation on the way- Alan’s situation grows even more complex,
and yet not dire. Fascinating, rather than tragic. And he looks at me with a unique
love that I have very rarely felt in my life.
I have never known family. Not real
family. I have my blood relations, and the chosen relationships that I have
called my Family. But those strange people with their comfortably known
unconditional love that they can honestly rely on for the rest of their lives,
because that’s what family is… I distrust the inheritance in their connections
to their families. They were born into love. I distrust that and in a way despise
it with calculated jealousy.
Without absolute loss, how can you
understand absolute love?
When Alan told me he was glad he
knew me. That we were in each other’s lives. That he got to see me grow from
the shy kid in a corner at CC’s to … where I am now. He said he was happy to
have me as Family.
All I could think to say was, “I
love you, too.”
I can only hope to have the same
kind of relationships Alan had… Some semblance of absolute love. I am
satisfied, nevertheless, in that I have experienced it now through him.
