Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to AIDS (11 page)

FEBRUARY 6, 1985: I have been reading a book on Buddhist thought and tradition. I’m enjoying it very much. It echoes so many of my own ideas about the world and the painfulness of life. But it says that we can break the chain of birth-sorrow-death-rebirth by
right action
. I believe this is true. I feel it innately. I think I have always known it. This is my way out, most likely not in this life, because I am too addicted to the sensual world, but possibly in one soon following. I feel that little by little I am moving in that direction….

Talked to Mom on the phone tonight. She sounds so calm it’s almost unreal. She has found her peace at last, much as my father promised she would. Much as he has promised that I will also. I long for mine, and I feel happy for and envy Mom. My parents are certainly my closest friends, perhaps that I will ever have.

MARCH 9, 1985: Hung out with some of the local gay flora tonight. I felt like a third thumb. There were four of us … . My discomfort was not of my own making. These guys all reminded me of so many of the queens that used to be in the bars. Sort of super faggot types. I think my anger is stemming from my loneliness. There’s that word once again. Isn’t there anyone around fairly normal
and gay
? The two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. What am I doing here? Why can’t I meet people whom I’m comfortable with? Where are the people like Scott and Richard?

APRIL 14, 1985: My homosexuality has always put a damper on my confidence. It has made me hang back from the others in games and anything that included an element of physical aggression. It has helped create, along with the melancholia, a very introspective life, a sort of pale, sickly child of the mind.

It may be that my attempts to make friends have been awkward. They have, granted, often involved a sexual attraction on my part, and therefore have made me into the shy, gawky kid. But then there have been very few people I really wanted to know. I long for people like Chris with whom I could discuss literature, art, philosophy, etc., at a stimulating level. Scott understands music and aesthetics, although he knows nothing about literature. Richard, also, could relate to philosophy, and at bottom I just plain enjoy his company. And so I ask myself why it has been so difficult to find such people here. I realize that these three friends were gleaned from a great crowd of people I have met in the last few years, and I did not meet them all at the same time. Making good friends is not a quick process. Brian today made me feel a greater interest in him and his ideas than I have felt for anyone I’ve met here….

But once again in my friendship with Brian, who is so very heterosexual, since he knows nothing about my homosexuality, he knows nothing about a great deal of my life. It is the crucial part of the puzzle. He cannot know me and understand my thought and experience without it. It becomes like trying to tell a story and having to leave out key elements. Great gaping holes. And because I am afraid of his reaction to such a revelation, I stumble on trying to avoid making the gaps apparent. Such a fear can become quite a blockade to true friendship.

APRIL 17, 1985: This tape makes me long for Los Angeles. Living there was such great fun. L.A. and I were made for each other. I wonder how I can even consider living elsewhere, including San Francisco. I can’t believe that I’m in Logan. The very idea is oppressive to me. I feel almost obsessed with the idea of getting out of here, whatever the cost. I must have been crazy to think I could ever be happy to spend four years here. But I can remember the rejection mentality I was in at the time I made the decision to come, feeling that I had to renounce the “fast life” of the big city and in no small way “punish” myself for having been such a promiscuous and highliving bad boy. And so we move to the opposite self-denying extreme of the spectrum. If I have learned anything by coming here, it might be to try to be more moderate in my choices. Happiness is not to be found by bouncing between the two poles.

MAY 15, 1985: I have wanted to write about this for a long time. But I have felt too ashamed about the fact that I “cruise” in the gym dressing room. Certainly my cruising is not blatant. In fact, it may be that I don’t pick up anyone because they can’t tell I’m even interested. I find the whole business sort of dreadful. What an odd thing to be writing about. I don’t think that anyone who is not gay could understand this matter. I sometimes think about how it would be for a heterosexual man, like my brothers or my father, say, to be able somehow to move freely among the naked bodies of women in their dressing room, without the women being aware of it, of course. He would blend in with them and yet would be like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is my situation. I am a wolf among the sheep. Like a predator in the steamroom, patiently waiting.

Last night for the first time in a long while I thought how foreign is the thought of living the rest of my life with a man. It’s fine in romantic fantasies but more difficult in reality. I have become more attracted to women in the past couple of years. I look forward to the time when I fall in love with a woman and sleep with her. I think about children more all the time. I long for domesticity in my life. I think about big houses and grandchildren and the type of environment I would like to provide my children for growing up. I think I would make a very good father and partner. Ideally, what I seem to be longing for at this point is some sort of ménage-a-trois, with another man and a woman. How the logistics would be worked out is uncertain. I have fantasies about meeting a man, falling in love, and on my telling him of my desire to meet a beautiful woman to marry and have children with, one who would understand my homosexuality, he would introduce me to his sister. A woman could also introduce me to her brother. But it seems important that they be tied together in some such manner.

I am homosexual. There is no doubt about this. I feel that this is now and will always be my true nature and inclination. But my aesthetic appreciation for women is developing and expanding into a more sexual inclination. I am beginning to feel a need for a female presence in my life, for a counter-balance that only a woman could provide.

* * *

[Again in Pocatello]

JANUARY 1, 1986: I have been intending to write for many weeks now. This seems an appropriate day to get around to it finally. [He recounts briefly the events leading up to his November hospital sojourn in the intensive care unit.] Not a pleasant experience. More info can be obtained from the other members of the family. I don’t remember too many details about the whole thing, thank goodness. Since then I have been on the slow road to recovery. My health is much improved. I feel like a different person. (Perhaps I am.)

Mike has gotten engaged to his girlfriend Marnice. I have to admit that I’m kind of excited by the whole thing. Someone from outside coming into our family.

It’s the new year and I have several goals I hope to fulfill:

1. I want to learn to juggle. I made myself some blocks filled with beans, made them today on the sewing machine. No small feat in itself.

2. I want to start learning some magic/sleight-of-hand tricks. I have wanted to do this for some time.

3. I want to learn to play my harmonica. I have wanted to do this for a long time too.

4. I want to write with more regularity. Several times a week if possible.

5. I want to start playing the piano again, eventually resume taking lessons.

These are simple things. I seem to have a great deal of time for them on my hands, but it is a commodity that may be in short supply.

FEBRUARY 8, 1986: There are times when I feel so restless I could just scream and scream. Absolutely everything seems to irritate me. But at this point there really isn’t much I can do about it. Mom made a comment today, that I might have to stay here for a very long time because of my illness. NOT IF I CAN HELP IT! This WILL NOT be my fate, to live out my life in Pocatello.

Now when I sit down to write out all the things I’ve been thinking about the past few days, everything turns to sand and slips away. I need to eat something. I feel sick from not having eaten enough today.

FEBRUARY 17, 1986: The doctor gave me the results of some blood tests today. They are basically unchanged from what they were in the beginning of my illness. My system is still screwed up. This is disappointing. I had been entertaining some hope that because I’ve been pretty healthy lately, perhaps the virus was dying. Apparently not. But being discouraged will not help. I should continue to be thankful for the health I’m experiencing right now and not be concerned with what might go down in the future. I will not worry….

Still, I can’t help being bummed about the results of the blood tests. I want to live! I want to get better. I have been making plans. Wasting away was not one of them. But get a grip. One never knows what fate has in store. Before I got sick with pneumonia, I didn’t have much desire to get better and very little desire to live. I just didn’t care. My mental state was
very
bad. Something changed in the hospital. I was offered a choice: to go or to stay. It was up to me at that point. I made the decision to stay. I have been approaching life with renewed vigor, finding enjoyment in things that had become empty for me earlier, like music and reading. Now that I am involved in living again, I feel afraid of death in a way I wasn’t afraid before. I have too much at stake, too much to leave easily, things I want to do. I have to stay well. At some point they’re going to find a cure.

I have been swimming with some regularity the last few weeks. I am surprised at my new found strength, though I can’t go as far and as long as I could before my illness. But its getting better, a good sign.

There are about ten old men that have been swimming regularly at the gym for years. Watching them is like watching the March of the Troll Brigade. Some of them wear flippers on their feet. They sit in the steam room with me after their swim. They do “exercises” in the steam. Waving their arms about, lifting their legs as they lie on the slab table in the middle of the room, they look for all the world like plucked chickens, their skin hanging, their withered breasts sagging above their bellies. Lord knows if these “exercises” help much. But the effort seems to satisfy the old men. Eventually they shuffle out slowly, their knarly, grotesque feet looking not quite human. I’ve been wanting to write about the old men for some time now.

FEBRUARY 23, 1986: I think Mom is as bored as I am. Some nights we two alone end up parked in front of the TV, aimlessly switching channels. We hand the channel changer back and forth, as if by letting someone else do it something of interest (even slight) will appear out of the wasteland. We both need to get out of here, out of this town, off this planet. I think I’ve watched every nature show ever devised.

My walk yesterday was so pleasant in spite of the drabness of the weather. I keep thinking about it. It was wonderful to be outside again. And I had a great swim today. Many laps, no fatigue. There was a pregnant woman in the pool today using a kickboard to paddle. She was graceful like a sea cow or manatee is graceful. Very nice. As I swam I could see only her legs and belly beneath the surface, this big extended orb. She was quite pregnant. I wonder if—and hope—her baby will like the water as I do because of this early exposure.

FEBRARY 24, 1986: There are times like now where I’m sitting out in the warm sunshine reading my book when I think, “I could possibly die soon, but I have stayed alive long enough to enjoy this moment.” I’m glad for this. I don’t mean to sound sappy. I saw a butterfly today, the first. Maybe that’s sappy. But a good sign.

MARCH 30, 1986: “
One day you’re here and that’s fine, and the next day you’re gone and that’s fine too, and someone has that very day come in to take your place whatever that might have been
.”

—City of Night

APRIL 14, 1986: Listening to
Der Rosenkavalier
. It makes me want to cry. The thought flashed by again today (it doesn’t happen too often) that I am not ready to die. I want to live. I want more.
I am not done yet
. I still have to keep my appointment with that mysterious lover in my dreams. He’s out there waiting for me and I refuse to believe that mysterious person is only death.

APRIL 21, 1986: Early morning. I have spent my life up to this point believing if I searched long enough that life and the “way” would reveal themselves to me, that my sheer desire would squeeze it out of the clouds and ether. This obviously has not happened. I am quickly coming to the point where I realize that the answer to my questions is, there are no answers. This is it. Some actor said something about this life not being a dress rehearsal. “But isn’t there something more?” I am so restless. I want to throw plates at the wall.

Evening. “
A man of old has said: ‘Those who practice meditation seeking things on the outside are all imbeciles.’ If you make yourself master in all circumstances, any place you stand will be the true one. In whatever environment you find yourself, you cannot be changed
.” —The Buddhist Tradition

APRIL 22, 1986: I have not felt good the last few days. I’m feverish most of the time, similar to the way I felt every day before I went into the hospital. This is only a recent development.

It rained hard today. Was beautiful. Everything is very green. Tulips everywhere, but no daffodils. Beautiful tulips, more than I’ve ever seen.

I feel discouraged because of my illness. It’s left me in this weird limbo land. I feel like a prisoner and wonder if this is how it will be from now on. Some days I’ve felt that I could easily work full time, or at least hold a part-time job, but then on days like yesterday when I feel like crap I know there’s no way I could hold a job. And so I’m becoming an invalid, trapped in my parents’ house.

MAY 10, 1986: Many things—I just watched a show on the Shakers and their community and beliefs. It made me want to cry (I’ve been emotional again lately). Their lifestyle was so simple. They achieved such serenity and peace in their lives. All things they did, they felt they did for God, and so they tried to do all things well and with pride. Their lives were celibate, and this in turn gave them great creative energy. They believed in equality and love for all men.