Hi —
I haven’t taken a shot at expressing my feelings about this historic week because it’s too overwhelming. But i can’t let it go by and not say anything. The Ku Klux Klan flag is down and the Rainbow Flag is up.
The thing i think about most is my friend Ralph and how i wish he’d lived to see this day. He could have but he didn’t, dying from some mysterious illness that everyone rushed to tell me “wasn’t AIDS”. Ralph was my good friend in high school before i or anyone i knew said a thing about “gay” — including him. He conducted the orchestra. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but he had these beautiful arms, i remember. He took me out to dinner for my 14th birthday and to the high school prom when i was a sophomore and he a senior. I had no idea that i was the girl he hoped he wanted. The son of a Polish catholic family, he went in the Army because his family couldn’t afford college and became a nurse because he couldn’t be a doctor.
I didn’t see him much while i was in college except for holidays when he’d come to my house with books for my mom and dad. And then one day, i don’t even remember when, i found out he was gay. By that time, i had a degree in theater. I kind of knew what gay was. I lived in Washington D.C. at the time and so did Ralph, so i used to go to military balls with him and make a good show. Yep, i was a beard.
But i look back now and cringe in horror at what his life must have been like. Yes, there has been Stonewall and Pride was a thing, but it didn’t come anywhere near “this man’s Army”. You could be asked — and told to leave. Kicked out of your house if not kicked in the head just for being gay and no one would lift a hand. Yes, i covered for him, but to me, barely out of my teens, it was more a game than a life and death necessity. I never went to his house or met his real friends because that was all hidden — even from me. Years later, after i’d married, divorced, moved to California and continued to struggle through the horrors of my own family, he came to visit with his partner. And then he died.
He was my friend. I loved him. But i never knew him. That makes me cry today when i so wish he could be alive to cheer — and hear me cheer with him.
In an amazing blog i hope you’ll read over at Heidi Cullinan’s website, Damon Suede says this:
“Today was a victory that LGBT activists earned one millimeter at a time crawling across the blood and anguish of thousands of people who have died simply trying to live their lives. Feel that fact.”
My friend tried to live his life when it was unimaginably hard. It’s almost as unimaginable that today it got a little bit easier.