pilseneastoscene

it took me 2 & 1/2 years to settle his estate.  not that i couldn’t have done it faster had i wanted to, but i was afraid that if i finished that legal process i would lose him forever (not true.)  i could not let go, even when his family asked why it was taking so long, i would prevaricate or not answer at all.  kindly & thankfully they did not press me (their love flame flickering in the wind.)

he grabbed my wrist as he lay in the hospital bed & pulled me close to his lips so i could hear him “you are my executor,” he whispered/rasped/coughed into my ear.  i cried “you won’t die, we’ll save you,” but i knew that was not true.  i called his family in nebraska & texas, they made the journey to chicago as soon as they had heard from me & stayed with m. & i.  his widowed mother, his two sisters & brother-in-law: we had never met, but our love for michael bonded us together, sharp like velcro.  it has yet to be pulled apart 23 years later.

i wept for days.  i still do when the light is streaming in the windows & the wind is rustling the pine trees & the whoosh of cars fades down the canyon’s road bed.  he died with all of us around his bed, quietly quitting this life, he just stopped breathing.  i don’t know how i managed to arrange a funeral service (so many friends to contact, i asked some of our closer friends to make calls for me, it was all i could do.)  it took me a few days to find a funeral home that would handle the body/cremation because of the nature of his death (AIDS) my anger rising as i received one “i’m sorry we can’t assist you at this time,” after another.

we loved each other like brothers (as i imagine brothers would love each other; neither of us had one of our own, he with sisters, me alone.)  we fell together at our first meeting & were hardly apart (psychically) for the next 12 years.  we never lived together, we never had sex (so common among our circle) we just enjoyed one another’s company completely & without question.  do you know that kind of friendship?  i’ve yet to have it again (with m. it’s different, you know.)  its faint aura still makes me ache with want.

after the funeral service i spent the next couple of months distributing his belongings according to his will.  i hadn’t expected him to be so organized (i don’t know why it surprised me, he was, after all, the only gay man i knew who had followed the midwestern watershed & ended up in chicago with a car, which put him in a class unto himself, the rest of us traveling via public trans or cabs.)

the birdcage to jimmy who was dying also, his lover dead just a few weeks before michael.  the well-worn black leather motorcycle jacket (think mapplethorpe) to chrissie (everyone called michael ‘dixie’, i was one of a very few who never used his diminutive, it was always michael.)  the plants to another friend, the car went back with his nebraska sister & her husband & his mother—they sold it.  the trip to chicago city hall to file the death certificate & the notarized copies mailed to his accounts (he left no debt.)  a little ceramic pot & his cherished ‘four seasons’ prints by mucha to so-and-so.  i wish i could remember all the names, but i can’t, the process was so difficult & emotional that i’ve lost much of the detail (only the pain remains.)

he was just a year older than i; i’ve never felt so comfortable & accepted & protected (it’s different with m. as i’ve said) than i did with him.  we shared everything, there wasn’t a day that didn’t go by that we didn’t talk, but yet time would pass without seeing each other & always, always the next meeting was as fresh as ever.  we did not need to speak to each other to enjoy the other’s company.  how many friends can you say that about?  i think that’s one of the greatest pinnacles of friendship, not-speaking & happy with it.

i cannot guarantee that this will be the last the post about this time of my life, but it will always be the most important.

he would not let me undress him.  we would sit on the front steps of 71_ w. 18th st. (just east of halsted in pilsen for you chicagoans) shot-gunning a joint, our lips so close that a passerby might mistake it for a kiss (a smokin’ one at that) and we would watch the passing traffic talking talking talking.  we would sit close enough to each other that our legs and arms would be touching and i would turn and look into his eyes (were they brown or blue?  they were beautiful) and stroke his cheek with the back of my hand, he was beautiful.

he would not let me undress him.  the fable of our falling together has yet to surface, all i recall is that for a few weeks in the heat of a chicago summer (was it ‘78 or ‘79?) i was his dog.  we did not make the scene, he did not meet my friends, although i told anyone who would listen how this beautiful boy and i were this close to fucking, but for the fact that he would not let me undress him.  he lived with his sister in an ugly contemporary building on dearborn just north of division street, perhaps the 1400 block, it looked like a concrete layer cake, the frosting being squeezed out between each layer of glass; you had to walk down a wide set of stairs to gain entrance to the lobby (like a subterranean car park) and up the elevator to their apartment.

he would not let me undress him.  their life seemed transitional, temporary, with two mattresses on the floor and clothing spilling out of suitcases and boxes with the detritus of life stacked in a corner (did i take this as a warning?  of course not, i was smitten, bit, enthralled to his charms, he was, after all, beautiful.)  his beauty was such that women, men and small animals (domestic and wild) would stop to watch him pass by, everyone of them would have laid down their life for him without the slightest hesitation, he was that beautiful.  had you seen him you would have understood my dilemma.

he would not let me undress him.  the time we were together was short, perhaps just a few weeks.  my gut tells me we kissed, but i cannot confirm that as fact.  he did not ask for money, although i gladly paid our way (food, drink, cover charges, cabs, bus & train fare) and i kept him stocked with the drugs of the day, but i did not feel like i was being used (well, perhaps a bit, but not enough for it to matter.)  i could not have been but a couple of years older than he so there was not the desperation of age motivating my desire to be with him.

he would not let me undress him.  and just as my memory of our meeting is shrouded in the depths of those final years of my denouement, our parting is equally undefined.  i believe that one day i went to his apartment and rang the bell and there was no answer.  i may have sat on the steps leading down into that concrete bunker contemplating my infatuation (that libido thinking) and cursing myself for falling so hard for one so beautiful.  had anyone seen me sitting there that day, they would have known, just from the slump of shoulders and the curve of my back, that i had been in love and had lost.  he, nor his sister, ever surfaced again, not even in a dream, although i could, at this very moment, tell you exactly how beautiful he was.

if you listen closely you will hear the stone hit the water

he loved me.  we did not date.  we were not boyfriends.  we did not exchange phone numbers.  when we did see each other it would happen like this: i would be out with friends & he would be standing next to me like a wraith appearing out of the smoke of the bar.  everything about him was pleasing: intelligent, witty, pretty (in a man sort of way), deferential to my friends & my relationship with them.

he loved me.  i did not love him/i do not know why i did not, love him.  he did not pressure me to return his love.  quite the opposite, he rarely made mention of his devotion.  i never said anything more than, “shall we spend some time/sometime together?”  he was always available to do so.  if he had a job, i did not know what it was.

he loved me.  you could see it in the way he stood next to me.  days after seeing us together, someone/a friend would comment, “he loves you. you can tell by the way he looks at you.”  i did not love him.  we would spend several days holed up in my space/only occasionally going out for food/cigarettes/beer.  after we made love, we would sit on the bed facing each other, legs & arms intertwined & talk about it all (hopes, dreams, aspirations) as if we both loved each other.  but i did not love him.

he loved me.  at a point in time/in the future/months, perhaps a year or two after we first met, he stopped standing next to me unexpectedly.  i don’t know when that happened, but i do remember thinking that he did not love me any longer.  alone/out at night, i would think of him/perhaps in the hope that the thought would conjure him up out of the smoke of the club.  it did not.  i may have loved him, but too late to make anything out of it other than what it was.  he loved me.

obvsly i’m going through a phase.  these polaroids floated to the top of my consciousness & of all the periods/eras/epochs of my life (so far,) this time was/is important enough that perhaps it should be named.  pilseneastoscene.  abuseozoic.

john john mcg.  for many of my friends at this time in my life, we really never exchanged phone numbers (although we always we knew where everyone lived, a chicago habit) our tumblr was the nexus of gay bars in chicago, from bushes/sidetracks/carol’s/manhandler/gold coast/bistro/le pub/gentry/cheeks/touché/i’m sure i’ve forgotten a dozen others.  we met there or there or there or someone would say, “everyone’s over at ________’s & then they’ll be heading to _________’s, let’s meet up with them at ___________’s around 1 (a.m.)

& we’d see our ‘crowd’ as in jill zarin’s “i run with a fabulous crowd of people,” (luv u rhny!) & we’d dance & drink & do _________ or smoke _________ & break up into smaller groups & kiss & make-out & pair off & get in a cab & head home with one or another & stay up til dawn ____ing & sleep til 3 or 4 pm & start all over again.

john john & i ran in that crowd (like the bulls in pamplona, if you took the google-satellite view) & for that time we loved each other very much, but mind you, it was ‘whenever’ & not ‘permanent’.  he had some big brain job in publishing which he never discussed & a beautiful apartment just north of belmont & west of lake shore drive (a walk-up,) but he always preferred coming to my place & only once did i go to his house (for a christmas party shortly before he died.)

i did not know he had died (several years after this photo, & after m. & i had begun our relationship) — i missed the service — & only when i ran into a mutual friend did i find out.  i sat alone for a while after that & began to think about all those men i’d known, both as friends & as lovers & those who had fled the city for bigger (or smaller) lives elsewhere & who had gone home to die, or stayed the course & disappeared, little wisps of smoke from the crematorium their only memory.

adam & jim, chicago, 1978

adam (on the left in this polaroid) came to visit me a couple of years later after this photo was taken (pre-m.) & confessed to me that he had been in love with me the whole time he had spent with jim (5 years.) he died later that same year of a brain tumor (undiagnosed.)  as far as i know jim never knew of adam’s love for me (or had the good manners to never mention it.)  love is messy.

he had a good way of hiding his infatuation because until he confessed to me i had no idea of his feelings (other than i loved them both as friends.)  jim & i had met in a bar (we did not have sex!) we just liked each other right away & immediately became inseparable (as friends.)

i’m not one for secrets.  wysiwyg is pretty much my motto.  oh, i have manners & such — i do function well in society (it’s based on secrets) but i like to call it as i see it (or move on.)  i may compartmentalize aspects of my life (something for you & another something for you.)  or i may edit portions of my life depending upon the company i find myself in (as we all do to one degree or another.)

but for adam to have held onto this little nugget of love & attraction for all those years & to share it with me too late to act upon it was surprising & devastating.  i wonder now if it wasn’t an act of seduction (one that i succumbed to without remorse.)

lee, chicago, circa 1980

what i think i was trying to say yesterday but failed to do so in a manner that was acceptable to me is that i lament the loss of the friends i have accumulated over the years.  of course, some loss is due to attrition, others fade away on their own accord, some (many) have died.  & i am not saying i am ungrateful for the handful who have stayed with me all these years & to those who’ve come along in the meantime, but i do regret the loss of those who were so close at the time that to have been without them would have been unthinkable.  & yet, they are gone.

yes, like many of you i surmise, i have tried locating them via the “world wide web” & i have found some, but once i’ve found them, too many intervening years have come between us & what could i possibly say to them that would make up for that absence of fellowship & that would re-ignite our comraderie/companionship/love? so, i have let them slip away again.  sometimes the search has been more important than the finding.  (the road is better than the end.)

& i fear rejection.  & i fear that i am a coward.  which i imagine are things that haunt all of us sometime, particularly when it comes to those human bonds that, for whatever reason, have been broken.

gpoyw—disaffected youth version.  me, 1978-79, wearing mao jacket & cap (complete with ‘little red book’ in front pocket) voguing (in a commie/pinko-kind-of-way) on a very out-of-place limousine in the decidedly downmarket artist’s colony of pilsen east, chicago.  this represents the nadir of my life—too many indulgences coupled with career paralysis & a general malaise of spirit leaving me emotionally exhausted & physically emaciated; my ‘spirit animal’ dead, if you must.  i’m glad you can’t see my face.

gpoyw: the chemical experiment ‘don’t try this at home’ version

collateral damage in the gay war of independence (circa 1969-1981.)  over-educated, under-appreciated, restless, rootless, with money & no direction, lacking a deus ex machina to right the wrongs, a product of heterosexual orthodoxy, their unexplained, assumed expectations & aspirations, southern baptist/pentecostal dogma & their demonization, self-loathing & self-righteous, godless & worshipped (by women & dogs) ghetto-thin on the way to ‘this life will self-destruct in 5 seconds.’

it was a frightful position to be in, so i ran away; sex, drugs, & disco (plus the plaintive cries of laura nyro/joni mitchell.)  i was skipping along the surface of a pond, a rock thrown hitting the water once, twice, three times (will the fourth sink it?)  hiding in this artist community like a refugee, mimicking diana ross in her biafran mode (big soulful green/blue eyes protruding from the bony carapaces of my face, all skin on bone, all arms & legs, chest caved in, you don’t believe me?  just look.)

with this status came great freedom too, but there was so much loneliness & heartache & hiding that overcompensation was the only recourse & that manifested itself as sexual attraction (i was shit to flies) men & women in equal parts, who knew my dance card could be so full (the women still make m. nervous) but i was in demand, sitting on the front stoop of my converted funeral parlor homestead, a bohemian rhapsody, wearing an afghani ceremonial robe (pre-karzai) dancing through the lofty space, twirling, a dervish.

i crash landed.  my girlfriend t. saved me, pulling me from the wreckage, tossing my samsonite suitcase in the trunk of a cab, cradling me in her arms (what a friend would do) & spirited me away, the draught of her friendship a restorative. i recovered on my own, not looking back except now, now when the distance traveled since then has lengthened with its landmarks & mileposts & esses & straightaways, over hills & down again (through the woods, amber waves of grain & other presumed metaphors) & now my far-sightedness allows me the luxury of actually examining that era (epoch) with some detachment, & although i lament the waste of time, i accept the journey & its far horizons.

this is how memory works.  one winter day, in february i believe, we were sitting in his room at northwestern hospital looking out at the cold chicago winter sky, that slate gray, monochromatic wash that some mad set decorator has applied to absolutely everything, even the coats of the doormen at the drake hotel are bathed in it, but that is but the backdrop to our conversation (he was in color, as i was, but the rest of the room was that sickly gray,) with our heads together, because he’s really struggling to breathe (you can hear the fluid gurgling in his lungs as he reaches up for air) & it’s hard for him to speak out loud, so i’m sitting on the chair next to his bed, leaning in, my eyes memorizing the star pattern of his hospital gown & how skinny his arms look sticking out from the cap sleeves, pale & slightly cold to the touch (i had reached out to hold him with one hand) & i notice that my blood is so close to the surface of the back of my hand that my pulse is throbbing in the veins coming down from my fingers, a tattoo of life so far away from his right now.  i can only look in his eyes for short periods (1/24th of second, like a frame of film) & then i must look at anything else, the truth too hard to bear for any longer, its weight heavy, a lead apron trying to protect you from the x-planation, the reality.

memory makes me an idiot.  i do not remember why i have this photo of him; he’s at o’hare waiting for a plane to take him to mardi gras in new orleans, one of his favorite times of year & a ritual for him & one that we never shared.  he would return days later, debauched & exhausted & vivid with detail.  & over several days, maybe even a few weeks, his time down there would be revealed in bits, in snatches, in pieces, in the car, on the ‘el’, at the bar.  but that hardly matters now; i look at this photo daily (it sits on my dresser) & i think about the leather motorcycle jacket that was as much a part of him as his skin & how much he loved sex.  i’m sure you’ve met them yourself, those men (gay or straight) who’s sole purpose in life is tending their sexuality.  he wasn’t brazen about it, you wouldn’t call him a slut (he was the soul of discretion) but he exuded sex, it seeped out of his pores & men (& women) couldn’t get enough of it.  & i believe this photograph helps me remember that vitality, that exuberance, that life.