Are You Guys Brothers?

At the conclusion of our Thanksgiving dinner, Milton and his boyfriend Matthew will take a plate of food to a homeless man who sits all day, every day, on the bench outside of a neighborhood Starbucks. I’ll cut up the turkey into bite-size pieces. The rest of the meal will easily be eaten with a plastic fork. The homeless man won’t say “thank you.” He never does. He won’t even make eye contact with Milton, though our friend buys him coffee periodically throughout the year, and he receives his annual Thanksgiving and Christmas meals from us dependably. I don’t need a “thank you,” nor does Milton. The reward is in the giving.

In Washington D.C. this Thanksgiving, hungry, homeless people, like our neighbor on the bench, are being threatened that if the City Council passes a law that recognizes Milton and Matthew’s love, the Catholic Church will quit feeding them. In this instance, the reward is not in the giving. The giving has a price tag. Cross the Catholic Church and they’ll quit feeding and sheltering the homeless or, as happened in Boston, quit finding homes for orphans, which the Church did when the state dared to allow gay people to adopt children. WWJD? What would Jesus do, indeed?

Thanksgiving is Ray’s and my favorite holiday for several reasons. For one, our hearts and souls hunger for opportunities to say “thank you” to acknowledge the extraordinarily good lives we have. We’re also exceedingly nurtured by the presence of dear friends sharing a special meal. We love the idea of people across the country finding their own unique culinary way to acknowledge their blessings. In addition, I love to cook, Ray loves to bake, and the annual turkey dinner with pumpkin-pecan pie is a delight to prepare and enjoy. There is very little stress associated with Thanksgiving. The frantic pace of Christmas is absent. And Thanksgiving is when we traditionally light the outdoor holiday decorations. Christmas lights bring out the child in us.

I also feel that Thanksgiving is the beginning of the season in which people become their better selves. That doesn’t happen on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, or Halloween. All of those days seem to provide many people green lights to be wild and crazy, drinking far more than is good for them or for the people who have to deal with them. But Thanksgiving conjures images of family in all of its forms, thoughts of God or our Higher Powers, and of the reasons we have to be happy rather than the ones we have to sad or angry.

Thanksgiving is when we are most aware of the disparity in riches of others in our families, circle of friends, neighbors, and colleagues. It is at this time that we think about bringing sweets to share at work, of donating money to food drives, and of calling or e-mailing people we imagine might be alone. It’s when we start thinking about what special, thoughtful gifts we’ll buy for the people we love, what colorful paper we’ll purchase to wrap them, what beautiful cards we’ll select to send affectionate messages to those in our lives we might only connect with once a year. Our higher selves are our giving selves, and our giving selves find our reward in the joy and comfort we bring to others.

That’s why we think to create a plate for the homeless person sitting alone on the bench outside of Starbucks. We don’t think of him on the Fourth of July or on Halloween. But we know that Thanksgiving means more to him than does Memorial or Labor Day. He too perhaps has childhood memories of the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie in the oven. This is the time of year that we remember our connection with him and with all other human beings.

Ray and I send best wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who reads this, even to those of you who live in countries in which this holiday is not celebrated. You’re in our hearts too. We promise not to withhold loving comfort from you just because your lives are somewhat different from our own. That’s not what Jesus or Milton would do.

_____________________________

Given the holidays and some dental surgery that I’m having in the next couple of weeks, I’m giving myself a short break from writing. I may get one more blog in before Christmas, or I may just spend my time watching holiday films that make me cry as I wrap presents and write cards.

Sweetness. Ray and I work very hard to fill each day of our lives with it, through thoughtful, loving behavior toward each other, by carefully choosing our friends and social engagements, by being aware of what we read, watch, and hear; and through our spiritual practice. When sweetness is absent in our lives, we feel it. We get defensive, impatient, and we isolate.

Despite our dire need for it to ensure emotional growth, most of us are starved for the milk of human kindness in our daily lives. Much of our days are consumed by the apathy, violence, cynicism, anger, boredom, meanness, selfishness, callousness, or hatred expressed by others. Pick up your daily newspaper and search for a story or a commentary that makes you feel good about being human. The newspaper headlines focus on atrocities, such as suicide bombings, slaughter of families, natural disasters. Even when the headline is about something worth celebrating, such as President Obama being selected for the Nobel Peace Prize, jealous people do their best to make it an unhappy event.

Listen to the radio, especially the call-in shows. Drive on a busy street and count the examples of kindness you see. Now, turn on the television. Half the programs involve solving a heinous crime or pitting ordinary people against each other in mean-spirited competitions. Even Brothers and Sisters, the star-studded 21^st Century answer to The Waltons, can make you yell at the behavior of allegedly close family members. Is it any wonder that so many of us are depressed, and that we seek escape from this nightmare in alcohol, pills, electronic games, pets, cell phones, movies, sleep, work, sports, and undisturbed walks in the woods or on the beach?

That’s why so many of us look forward to the holiday season. That’s not to say that we don’t carry with us horrific memories of childhood disappointments, but we keep believing that this year it’s going to be different. This year every person in the world is going to wake up on Christmas morning and declare he or she has changed for the better, as did Ebenezer Scrooge. The holidays, we recall, are when newspapers print nice stories about neighbors chipping in to buy presents to replace the ones burned in a house fire. Editorials appear that insist, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Airwaves are filled with the musical message of “Peace on Earth.” Even Rush Limbaugh is less the Grinch. Drivers of cars with wreaths attached to the front grill or with trees roped on top are less likely to flip the bird at us for driving too slowly. And George Bailey, who represents all of us in his battle with mean Old Man Potter, smiles with tears when Clarence gets his wings and accepts his and our reality that despite all of its challenges, it really is A Wonderful Life.

So, this year, maybe, just maybe, the Israelis and the Palestinians will cease fire on Christmas Eve and share food and drink as the Germans and Americans do each time we watch the film Silent Night, or the French, Germans, and Scottish do in the deeply moving World War I film, Joyeux Noel. And who knows, maybe this will be the holiday season when NATO troops and the Taliban will do the same in Afghanistan.

Perhaps this will be the year that Republicans and Democrats in Congress say, “I believe!” and shake hands like Mr. Gimble and Mr. Macy did in Miracle on 34^th Street and give the American people a sense of hope that bipartisan cooperation will fill our stockings with affordable health care, clean air, a balanced budget, and an end to referendums that deny fellow citizens the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you really are who you say you are Kris Kringle, make it happen. “I believe!”

I know it hasn’t happened in the past, but maybe this year, just like John Walton does in the perennial favorite, The Homecoming, American soldiers will make it home from the Middle East in time to ensure that it’s the best Christmas Eve ever for them and their families, and maybe they too will tell their loved ones how they’re not going to go away ever again, and when asked, “But how will we survive?” they’ll respond, “We’ll live on love.”

And maybe, just pretty-please maybe, this holiday season, the pig-headed bishop will notice that his abandoned family is being taken care of in his emotional and physical absence by a loving, joyful, handsome, sweet angel who has the ability to make everyone feel good about themselves, and maybe the alleged representative of Christ will quit focusing on the Church as a structure, and see it instead as a means of expressing the embracing love of God, just as he did so powerfully in The Bishop’s Wife. Wouldn’t that be sweet?

The visions of sugarplums that dance in Ray’s and my head this season as we eagerly and excitedly await the arrival of the world’s kindest man, are that no one in the world being so hungry that they’ll eat dirt, or so cold that they can’t stop shivering to sleep, or so afraid of being abandoned that they endure physical and emotional abuse.

We want everyone to get their wish for Christmas, whether it’s a genuine Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Air Rifle, despite our fears that they’ll shoot their eyes out, or peace on earth. We want everyone to experience sweetness in their day, from friends, family, their pets, and themselves. Just this year, maybe it can happen. Just this holiday season, maybe our dreams will come true, even if it’s just until Tiny Tim lifts his tin cup and toasts, “God bless us everyone.”.

We also hope that when the holidays end and everyone throws away the festive cards they received, takes down their beautiful decorations, turns off the enchanting Christmas music, and stores their soul-nurturing movies, that they won’t give up on looking for, creating, and believing in sweetness in their lives for themselves and for others. That may mean not reading every tragic story in the newspaper, turning off the radio, taking side streets to work, giving up television shows that make it hard to sleep peacefully, and avoiding people who are sour. Maybe that could be a New Year’s resolution.

But that’s weeks away. Now is the time to accept the generous offer from the Ghost of Christmas Present to take a sip of the cup of human kindness. It’s good and so good for you.

If I listed the characters who have most influenced my life, I’d need to include the fictional Mame Dennis Burnside, known to most people as “Auntie Mame,” portrayed with brilliance by Rosalind Russell in the hilarious 1958 film by the same name. I would be willing to bet that most gay men of my generation were equally inspired by her undaunted embrace of the unknown and her complete surrender to every new opportunity to play.

Were she to see us moping, feeling angry and depressed about the elimination of our marriage rights in Maine, Mrs. Burnside would lovingly pull us into her arms, gently pat our heads, tenderly kiss our cheeks, and soothingly say, “I know. I know. But don’t give them the satisfaction of seeing you down. We’ll have our day. You just wait and see. Now let’s get up, get dressed in something fun and fabulous, and show the bastards what real love looks like.”

“Life is a banquet,” she advised her young nephew Patrick, “and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

Auntie Mame was bigger than life but loathed pretense and snobbery. She embraced every aspect of human nature except for judgment. Her mind was ever-inquisitive, her décor ever-changing, and her friends ever-loyal. She feasted on the beauty of being.

Ray and I recently introduced two thirty-year-old gay men who had never heard of her, and their reaction of complete charm underscored how Mame’s message of “Live! Live! Live!” transcends time.

“It’s the best movie I’ve ever seen,” gushed Milton, a 36-year-old from Brazil. “It’s now my favorite.”

Mame and her philosophy of turning every situation into a party have popped up several times since we sat with her a week ago. One friend, for instance, sent me a YouTube clip that showed how people in Stockholm decided to start taking the stairs rather than the escalator when the steps were transformed into piano keys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN0eabGb-vI&NR=1 Unless they were physically incapable of walking up or down the stairs, I would hope that everyone would let go of their schedules and patterns of behavior in that situation and make going from one level to another a fun feast at the banquet of life.

Another friend sent me a YouTube clip of a group of late-night Halloween partiers in Provincetown, MA who performed Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance number on Commercial Street. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdctoLz5ADc It was brilliant, but had I been in town instead of back in Ft. Lauderdale, I suspect that I would have starved rather than feasted because I wouldn’t have wanted to stay up late and be among some people on the streets who might have had too much to drink. My fear of the unknown and of inconvenience would have been a disappointment to Auntie Mame and to me when I heard from others what I had missed. Despite our life goals, sometimes we fail to live up to our images or expectations of ourselves.

Two other friends shared stories this week of choosing to starve themselves of life’s joys, but theirs are in an ongoing pattern of choosing suffering. One friend spoke of how the most recent significant other in his life is taking advantage of him as has every romantic interest he has ever courted. He is so afraid of being alone that he puts up with the person’s lack of physical interest in him, his compulsive drinking and smoking, and his complete financial dependence.

“What are you getting out of it?” I asked. “You deserve to be happy.”

“I know. I know,” he replied.

“You have to make choices to be happy,” I said. “You know that I love you but I can’t be a part of this repeated drama any longer. It’s too depressing. You’ve got a lot of healthy people waiting for you to decide to be happy.”

To another friend, hooked on drugs and alcohol, and in complete denial of his life patterns of irresponsibility, I wrote, “We create our own happiness and we create our own suffering. It doesn’t matter one bit what happened to you or to me in our childhood. Some people with our experiences are rotting in prison and no one cares because they have caused so much heartache in other people’s lives. Some people like us live really happy lives and are surrounded by people whose lives they have positively impacted. It’s our choice where we end up – no one else’s.

“The only one who can save you from a miserable, shitty life of addiction and failure is you. The only one who can turn your life around is you. You are fully capable of doing it. I don’t think you have a chance of doing it without going to 30 AA or NA meetings in 30 days and getting a sponsor. You’re in the crapper right now. I love you but I can’t do a thing for you except point the way. Go to NA and avoid at all costs anyone who activates your disease.

“Underneath all of the shit that you’ve rolled in, is a gem of a man. You are a diamond in the rough. Patiently but persistently make decisions that allow yourself to shine before you die and no one has a clue who you really were. Had I not made the decisions I have made, I’d be a closeted, alcoholic, frustrated failure.

“I’m in your corner. I can’t get too close because your disease can activate my own. Choose life. Do what needs to be done.”

Auntie Mame never said “shitty” in the movie, (my mom hated the word) but I suspect Mame was most capable of using it when necessary, and I feared that simply telling my young friend that life is a banquet and that he was starving himself wouldn’t effectively get his attention. Regrettably, neither did my e-mail. His boyfriend wrote to say that the drinking and drugging had gotten worse and that he was kicking him out of the house.

We can’t make other people be happy but we can teach ourselves how to feast on the beauty of being. Instead of choosing attitudes and behaviors that will make them grow joyfully, some people around us will adopt the mantra of “Die! Die! Die!” It’s horrible to watch someone you love, and even someone you don’t know, starve in front of you. But there’s nothing we can do except be happy ourselves and introduce others to the option of being open to life. We can show them how to do it just as Auntie Mame thankfully did to me and continues to do for others.

So, we must pick ourselves up after the defeat of our civil rights in Maine, keep our eye on the horizon, and “Live! Live! Live!”

“What has been the happiest time of your life?” I asked Ray as we waited in the pre-op area of the Cleveland Clinic in Florida, he in a hospital gown with an IV drip at his side, me in a white molded plastic chair at the end of his bed. There was something about being surrounded by people heading into operations that most of them feared which made the question seem appropriate to the setting.

Shifting uncomfortably because of his throbbing lower back, the expiration of his pain meds, hunger, the unfulfilled hope for a successful trip to the bathroom, and our long wait, he pondered for a minute or two and replied, “I’d say the past few years, minus all of the pain in my neck, shoulder, and back, have been my happiest. I’ve loved our travel.” Ray is happiest when we’re together, even if it’s just eating homemade pizza in front of the tube watching Fringe, Glee, Sons of Anarchy, or any of our other taped programs. He could die without regrets, feeling he had fully lived.

“We’re lucky,” I said. “We could be here for something more serious like cancer surgery. Some of these people fear they’re going to die here.”

“I wouldn’t want to die here,” Ray replied. “I want to die at home.”

“Imagine if you were here alone?” I said. “The elderly woman across the hall told the nurse that she had no family, and there was no one to call.”

“That would be hard,” he agreed.

“You’ve got a lot of people eagerly waiting to hear from me tonight how the operation went. We’re pretty lucky.”

“We are,” he agreed.

“Are you guys brothers?” asked the young medical student at the end of the bed who had just requested permission to look at Ray’s chart.

“No, but that’s the title of my last book,” I replied. “Every gay couple I know gets asked that question.”

“Really?” she replied. “But you look like brothers, right? Where do I get your book?”

A short while later, three hours after he checked in at the front desk and after brief meetings with his doctor and anesthesiologist, both of whom were introduced to me as his spouse, Ray was wheeled into the operating room. I lingered as he departed and walked over to the elderly woman in the bed across the hall.

“How are you doing?” I asked as I gently squeezed her knee.

“I’m okay,” she replied with a smile.

“I heard you say you were alone.”

“Oh, I’m not alone. The doctors and nurses all know me here. I’ve been coming here since the early 1990s.”

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

“No, I’m okay,” she smiled.

“If you don’t need anything I’ll be heading home,” I said as I gently squeezed her again and headed out. “Take good care of yourself.”

You know the expression “I’d be lost without you”? It’s true. I got lost driving home from the hospital and again heading back. Fortunately, I got into Ray’s room and was able to set it up – hang his robe, set up the sound machine, turn the television on and to Fast Money, set up his toiletries, order an extra blanket, put his pillows into their cases, dim the lights and re-arrange the furniture – before he arrived from post-op. None of it much mattered because he was in such pain when he arrived. That moment wouldn’t be remembered as one of his happiest, but he was awfully glad to see me. He smiled through his agony long enough to tell the Jamaican nurse assistant, “He’s my spouse and we’ve been together for nearly 34 years.”

It was frustrating to be able to do nothing more than hold Ray’s cold hand and tell him that the Dow was up 130-plus points. What he needed most was more pain meds, which I was eventually able to secure without pulling a Shirley MacLaine. His doctor okayed a Percocet. Once Ray finally settled down, I pushed a button and the room was filled with the sound of crashing waves. I kissed him “good-night” and he fell asleep, at least for a few minutes. I arrived home without incident, eating along the way an apple and a package of peanut butter crackers that I had brought for Ray, miraculously was able to turn on the television, and ate a dark chocolate sundae. When I checked my computer, it was filled with messages from friends grateful for the update I had sent them when I heard from the surgeon after the operation. I thought about the elderly woman I had met earlier and wondered if she was listening to the sounds of waves in her room or if e-mails of concern would greet her upon her return home. Were these her happiest days?

I lay in bed and went through all of the hundred cable channels on the television in our room. Once again, I was so excited about being able to figure out how to use the remotes that I would have run outside to do a victory dance if it hadn’t been raining. Once I reminded myself it was going to be a challenging ordeal for both Ray and me at the hospital the next day, I looked over at his empty side of the bed, turned on the sound machine, smiled at the thought of us connected in separate rooms by the sound of waves, sent him healing thoughts, whispered “Good night honey,” and turned off the light.

Anyone who has ever left a loved one in pain in a hospital room overnight knows how wrenching an experience it can be, especially if the person is someone who looks to you for support. Such unsettling separations don’t make for smiles of joy, but the reflections of those moments of love do. Among life’s happiest of times are those when we are very aware of how lucky we are to have the lives we do and the people with whom we share it.

On YouTube, I have a variety of video clips from my various educational DVDs. The short segment that gets the most attention is entitled “A gay man and a fundamentalist Christian were on a plane.” The comments left behind by viewers range from “Thank you” to “Being homosexual is immoral,” and “This fag reminds me of Jimmy Carter.” (The latter was left by “Jesus4mankind.”) I replied that Jimmy Carter reminded me of Jesus.

The comments need my approval before they are posted. Usually, I let the back-and-forth between readers flow without interruption, but I nix the most vile messages. It would curl your hair and break your heart to read what some people are capable of thinking and writing, especially in the name of God.

In the recently-released film The Invention of Lying, God is referred to as “the man in the sky.” He is created by an imaginative man who lives in a world without lies. He makes up God to comfort his dying mother and to satisfy the hunger of the millions of people worldwide who heard the man had the answer to life’s meaning.

Had I seen that film in the late 1960s as a young man attending a Catholic college, I would have been horrified. Jesus was my best friend. My reaction to the film forty years later is one of glee. That’s not to say that I don’t still have a special place in my heart for the character Jesus that is described in the New Testament of the Bible, but the idea of the man in the sky determining who gets cancer and who wins the lottery is as ridiculous as believing in the Hogwarts School of Magic (with apologies to fellow Harry Potter fans.)

Yet, since I don’t live in a world without lies, I find myself frequently committing them by not speaking the truth when people seek comfort in God. Just yesterday, as I had my hair cut, the stylist explained that the man pictured with him in the photo was a dear friend who had committed suicide. “He’s in a better place now,” he said. “No more pain.” I know that he was imagining his friend in a place called “heaven,” and though I think such a notion is wishful thinking, I also don’t question someone who at the moment needs to believe in it in order to deal with the grief of a senseless death.

Ray heads into the hospital tomorrow for surgery on his back. His L3-4, and his L4-5 need serious work. Had he needed such surgery thirty-four years ago when we met, I would have prayed to the man in the sky for a successful operation. It’s not that I don’t believe in the power of positive thinking but I spend more time now asking questions about the surgeon’s qualifications than I do begging God to make things okay. It’s not that I don’t believe in a unifying and ultimate life force. I just don’t imagine it as a personal consierge.

In this morning’s New York Times, it was reported that Pope Benedict XVI is working on making it easier for Anglicans who share his negative biases about women and gay priests to join the Roman Catholic Church. Do you think that idea came from the man in the sky?

Do you think the man in the sky likes “Jesus4mankind” to call people “fags”? After such a person dies, will he go to a better place? If there is no “better place,” why do the people in government give people who lie about such things so much credibility?

It seems to me that all persons should be allowed to believe what they choose to believe, be it Santa Claus or the man in the sky, but that no such beliefs should be given deference by the state so that churches that promote the man in the sky pay no taxes but writers of children’s fantasies such as Where the Wild Things Are do. I wonder what Jimmy Carter would think about that.