Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to AIDS (10 page)

BOOK: Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to AIDS
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There were some consolations. His lover was beautiful, the pout of the lips irresistible. There were miles of tropical beaches. But otherwise he felt stagnated. What was he doing here?

JANUARY 10, 1983: I lost my job today. No warning. Only a message not to come in. Depression, a feeling of inadequacy. A prison of boredom—again. Why can’t I just be an artist. A life that is streamlined. Mine has so many snags.


Nobody is allowed to fail within a two-mile radius of the Beverley Hills Hotel.”

Gore Vidal

* * *

[Going back to Idaho]

FEBRUARY 13, 1983: I’m leaving Hawaii. Going back to Idaho for a while and maybe to Sacramento later in spring or summer to work for Brent. Hopefully school, landscape architecture, in the fall.

Hawaii has been good, a nice transition. Why am I so insecure about my decisions and my life thus far? My moralistic self wants to brand me and have me suffer for the past few years. I’m suffering from this backlash. I’m losing friends as a result of my moralistic judgments; am becoming increasingly schizophrenic, paralyzed by my harsh, puritanical, hateful side which confronts my lustful, blundering but progressive self. I have to keep it all in control. I hope going home helps and doesn’t hinder. I know that I’m trying really hard. Please don’t let everything I’ve loved so far be a mistake, as it seems in their eyes. I can handle it.

MAY 3, 1983: I’ve almost finished a second month of my Babylonian captivity, in other words, I’m still in Idaho. Being here dredges up all sorts of memories, many of them unpleasant: old feelings of guilt (that prison without walls); adolescent emotions from high school which amaze me in that they can still twist me around the same as before, emotions of inadequacy, lack of confidence, the need to measure up to the old macho creed. Just walking around these streets brings the boogies back. And then there’s the inescapable dark hand of the church. This too surprises me, for I had forgotten how much suppressed anger, frustration, and hatred can accompany one who dares to be independent.

Living at home is both a cradle and a curse. On the one hand, it’s nice to be back among these people with whom I grew up and have shared so much, to feel a part of a unit, to be needed by my family, to draw
some
strength from them. And yet I find myself retreating back into some of my old adolescent patterns of suppressed anger and frustration in my relationship with my parents as I am temporarily dependent on them. They have given me great leeway to do as I want, and yet I still—perhaps only in my mind—feel the subtle pressures, and my own anxiety over our differences, and the need to
prove
myself in their eyes.

In ways, I almost feel like an anthropologist on a mission to study the nuclear family from within. I feel both attached and curiously removed from them, as though I had never seen them before. In some ways I really hadn’t. It’s difficult to be objective about something you’ve not broken with yet, as a child not having any basis for comparison. The question is, “Do I really like these people?” a question which I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking at one time. The answer, by the way, is yes. Blood is thicker than water.

Still I feel, perhaps because of my age or perhaps because of my sexual orientation, the urge to go far away from them. I feel that somehow I don’t quite fit. A square peg in the proverbial round hole. And also I feel sad about my inability to communicate, or their inability to understand, what it really means to be gay, that flame that burns in my soul. I am beginning to despair that they will ever understand, accept yes, understand no. A source of great hurt for me. By not understanding, they—who could be my most delightful and satisfying companions—are separated in spirit from me. Without meaning to be tragic, I think I have no choice but to go away, to seal off the hurt with distance and occasional phone calls. Perhaps this will change with time.

JULY 13, 1983: I realize intuitively (and at times through conscious deliberation) that happiness, long term happiness, is not going to be gained by life in the fast lane, by a constant pursuit of transient pleasure, which is what my few years in Los Angeles so largely consisted of. Anything else seemed to be a bother, to be standing in the way of the “earnest” and “real.” Thus I spent a lot of time (and still do) feeling dissatisfied because life gets in the way; i.e., I don’t have much money, I have to work for a living, I can’t be in two places at once, I have to go back to school, etc. I could make a long list.

The vision of life I was shown in L.A., or perhaps the vision I saw because of my own predilections and fantasies, was one of endless sensation, a kind of movie world, a fantastic realm where things are always “too cool.” Such a world, however, also seemed to be constantly evasive, just beyond my fingertips. This was much the case for most of my L.A. friends also, none of us having been born with a silver spoon in our mouth, yet we ached for and, yes, at times felt we had attained that idyllic moment. But it always seemed to finish too quickly. What a crash, what a disappointment. “You mean I’m not one of the beautiful people?” Cinderella at 12:00 midnight. Back to the ashpit, back to the struggle, the endless frustrating pursuit.

Somehow I want to reconnect with the real world. Life isn’t the fantasy I wanted it to be. In looking back, already I’m beginning to see how young I was. To go through all that would be hard on anybody. I’ve a few battle scars to show for it.


But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city
.” —Brideshead Revisited

JULY 28, 1983: My days sometimes seem to pass in a dream-like state. I move from the pools of my unconscious dream world of sleep and go swimming at the gym shortly after waking up. The sensation I feel—to have moved so quickly from the one liquid reality to the other—is strange. It can become difficult to discern whether I am really awake and swimming with a sense of having been previously sleeping, or vice versa, sleeping while dreaming of moving in this cavernous liquid womb. From the pool I go sit in the steam room, sometimes for nearly an hour. Again, here is an “unreality,” a small oblong room, very warm and humid, the steam making the enclosure seem possibly much bigger, a womb again. Images continue to flood forward, mind trips. Home to study; all day spent with my nose in a book. This seems to be but a continuation with somewhat more direction. The day is one long flowing mental river.

JULY 29, 1983: I miss homosexual company. I miss being able to share fully the sense of irony that our lifestyle brings with it. There is no one here who understands. I have tried and tried to explain to my parents the fundamental differences in sensibility between homosexuals and straights, and yet, as I do not fully understand them myself, I can only fumble and search for words which fail to express this thing. Philosophy, outlook, value system: all these words and others fall short of that spirit which makes GAY. Indeed it is something of a spirit, perhaps a muse which touches some and not others. I end such discussions feeling total frustration and, sometimes, unspoken anger. But I am beginning to realize that such things do not need to be explained to everyone, even if it were possible. My necessity for explanation comes from my own need to understand and defend. As I grow more comfortable with myself, I suspect that much of this need to explain to others will die away….

Two years since I began this notebook. Bits and snatches of a wild time in Oz. (“Is there life after Oz, Glinda?”) A new phase has begun in my life. I’m growing up, slowly but surely, and yet at times I feel as if I shall never grow old, remaining one of the Lost Boys forever.

Facing the future is frightening. I try to project my mind forward to divine hidden events, but can only guess at possible scenarios. Being comfortable with the unknown is not one of my strong points, nor is living in the present. I suppose the future will be here all too soon.

SEPTEMBER 26, 1983: Reading Hesse’s
Demian
. Very interesting. I have always seen myself in the characters of his novels. The same again this time. It is as if he had read my thoughts before they or I existed. The books always seem so relevant to my needs at the times I have been reading them.

* * *

[At Utah State University]

OCTOBER 2, 1983: So classes have begun. One week gone by already. This thing is not going to be any easy task. They are working our butts off. I suspect they enjoy their own tyranny. The whole thing feels like some sort of initiation ceremony into a brotherhood. If you pass the test (the final at the end of the second year), you’ve made it into the club, you’ve proven your worth. Well, I want to be in their club, I tell you, and they can throw their worst at me. I’ll give it my best shot.

OCTOBER 14, 1983: Living in this community throws my oddness, my homosexuality into sharp relief. It seems impossible to blend in, to be a part, to think like the people of this community, this mentality. A sad story.

OCTOBER 15, 1983: Mom and Dad stopped by tonight on their way back from Salt Lake. They had said they might, but still it was a pleasant surprise. I took them over to see the department studios where I spend so much time. We got into a discussion in the sophomore studio about the light and dark sides (Apollonian versus Dionysian) of one’s personality, I saying that I love the dark side, the danger of falling, Mom saying that she is frightened for me.

I have to laugh at us, the way we drop into such deep and intense discussions at any time. How typical. Was so good to see them. We went and got ice cream. Their 26th anniversary tomorrow.

NOVEMBER 16, 1983: There are the good days and the bad ones. On the bad ones I feel as if I’m falling down a dark hole, grabbing at the sides with my finger nails, trying to hold on. Or I feel as if I’m crawling, slowly, blindly, groping my way through the hours I have to remain conscious, wishing and waiting only for the time when I can find some respite in sleep.

The good days are marked only by the lack of this darkness moving in over the horizon, much like storm clouds which I am powerless to stop, able only to watch their approach. The good days are only characterized by the lack of this unbelievable numbness and fear. The last week has been pretty good in this sense, if one can call such a feeling good.

NOVEMBER 20, 1983: When I reread my entries from the past few weeks/months, it seems hard to believe that I can get so low at times, that things can be so bad. The problem is that they do and often put me at my wit’s end. I’m bored here. There are just no two ways about it. I don’t know what to do.

In trying to be positive about the whole situation, I can say that Logan is beautiful (as it always has been). The program here is definitely a good one—probably one of the best. But other than that I am at a loss for any other good words. I feel as if I am living my life in a vacuum—no friends, no real stimulating conversation, no night life, no confidante, nowhere to get away. Have I made a gross mistake in deciding to go to school here? Should I have gone back to California and tried to study there—Davis maybe?

DECEMBER 4, 1983: I’ve been in one of my anti-homosexual moods again today. Raging inside myself against the horrible anti-social sexual werewolves that we all are. Right? Like I said—what’s a boy to do? I have to confess, I don’t understand the whole thing. Is it symptomatic of other more deep-seated problems? Am I rebelling against the world? Am I afraid of growing up and refusing to accept responsibility and my own mortality? I long for love, but do I really know how to love, or is it just neurotic projection of my fantasies. But when I think about living the rest of my life with a man (not mattering that we “might” love each other) I am hit with a wave of straight homophobia.

DECEMBER 6, 1983: As I have said before, the common life here in this small, rural, middle-class town contrasts powerfully with the life that the majority around me (and even I at times) see as abnormal, the homosexual life. I think about how much safer and more at ease I felt living in the ghetto where there was security in numbers, where you weren’t constantly reminded of your “oddness.” (That is, until you got off the bus—with fifteen other men who all looked, dressed, and acted the same and went to the same places.) Perhaps I deceive myself into thinking it was much more comfortable there. Self-destructiveness certainly existed at a peak level in the ghetto. Even though we were all comfortable with our “gayness,” we seemed hellbent on doing some damage to ourselves, whatever the consequences. That isn’t comfort.

JANUARY 19, 1984: I’m enjoying my classes so much. This is what keeps me going. Design, Graphics/Sketching, and Site Analysis. Just finished a design problem for Dick Toth. Composition showing enclosure/implied line w/focal point/balance, etc. Fun but I feel drained. Worked all day to finish by 5:30. Very pleased. Don’t know how the grading will go. Must write about my attitudes toward this man and why I like his classes, why I hang on his words–and hope for his respect.

JANUARY 20, 1984: Went to a party tonight, with a girl from class, Monica, and her boyfriend/lover, Paulo. Both from Argentina. Fun party, with quite an international cast—South Americans, Europeans, blacks, a few Orientals. I had thought this type “scene” did not exist here. There is life in Logan after all.

NOVEMBER 1, 1984: I try to approach my stay here as a sort of Buddhist test. Now is the time when I must learn control: control of my desire/hunger, control of my self-identity, control over that raging animal which tears at my inside and seems close to breaking free…. There are too many times that I feel my grasp, my ability to pass the test turning into a failure. It seems to be more than I can deal with.

I need to turn my anger and fear into physical activity, to work myself to the point of exhaustion so I don’t carry such poisonous flammable material around in my head. If I cannot find others to share with me, I will do it myself. I will beat it out of my own hide!
But it must not be done in anger
. I need some sort of daily workout. I have to begin to press myself in this area, into a new direction.

BOOK: Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to AIDS
4.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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