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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.