Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Scent of a Man (and of a Turkey Sandwich)

     One of the highlights of my love life has been the excitement that I would feel each time I spotted Ray walking toward our apartment or pulling in the driveway of our home after work. If I had a tail, it would wag. I could feel my whole body tingle in joy that he was home and we were safely together, and didn’t he look handsome in his suit, and soon I’ll be feeling his soft lips on mine and inhaling his intoxicating scent.

     Ray retired over a dozen years ago and rarely travels alone, so I don’t have many opportunities to respond as excitedly to the sight of him returning home, but I travel a lot now and I return home in a coat and tie and look so forward to his beautiful smiling face waiting for me at the airport or just inside the door.

     The kisses aren’t as seductively passionate anymore because they aren’t going to lead to anything else, and the hugs are a little less intense because of pain in the shoulder and in the neck, and the scent isn’t as intoxicating perhaps because our hormone levels have changed, but the smile is just as genuinely warm and welcoming and the feelings of completion, safety, joy, and surrender are even more intense than they were thirty-two years ago.

     I write these reflections in an airport lounge waiting to head to my gate to board a plane that will take me to Boston’s airport where I’ll then climb in the back of a car and be driven the two-plus hours to Provincetown. I’m exhausted from my two days of work, but I know that at the end of the long trip home there will be a smiling face and a warm hug and a TV table set up for my hot turkey sandwich that he will warm for me, to be eaten while watching a taped show he didn’t watch so that we could do so together, and a bowl of my favorite dark chocolates next to the sofa, and the bed will be pulled back, my phone messages will be listed, the mail will be sorted and stacked, and he will say, “It’s nice to have you back safe and sound where you belong. I missed you. How was the trip?”

     He really won’t have to ask me about the trip because we have e-mailed each other back and forth several times each day for the past three days, updating each other on what we’re eating, what we’re watching on TV, who we heard from, how the stock market is doing, how the workshops went, what the weather is, how we slept, and what we’re looking forward to.

                  Often, I wish there was still sex in my relationship with Ray. My drive is still very strong. But there is no lack of intimacy. When I start to feel a need for more passion, I recall and savor the many cherished memories of going from the front door to the bedroom in the early days of our life together when we both had the sexual appetites of 20 year olds. I can clearly recall Ray’s scent as I sit in the Air Canada lounge, close this blog out, and head to the gate. I’m grateful for the memories but I’m also looking forward to the wonderful scent of the hot turkey sandwich, of rubbing Ray’s foot as we watch a taped episode of True Blood, and of eating my dark chocolate nonpareils. If I had a tail, it would be wagging.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Neat and Tidy

     A few months ago, I published Are You Guys Brothers?, a book in which I described, among other factors impacting Ray’s and my efforts at intimacy, the inappropriate sexual touch of my father when I was a youngster. Since then, I’ve heard from dozens and dozens of gay men and women I don’t know who have said “thank you” for the honesty, because much of what I said mirrored their own life experiences.They felt affirmed and freed to be honest about their own lives. Many of the readers said they cried when reading the book, but none of them have said “What an awful man your father was.” None of them even mentioned him, or even the abuse, unless they too were sexually abused.

     The only person in my enormous extended Irish Catholic family of siblings, aunts, and cousins who has contacted me about the book is my older sister Kathy who wishes that I hadn’t needed to talk about Mom and Dad, but who nevertheless loves and supports me and is grateful that my work touches people’s lives.The others, including people with whom I thought I was very close, have reacted with what I have experienced as angry, icy silence or just obliviousness. Initially it hurt and angered me that they would be, as I imagined it, more upset about the reputation of a dead parent, uncle, brother, or grandfather than they would about a living survivior who felt vulnerable from baring his soul, but I have since accepted their lack of support and have moved on from them. (I think. I hope.)
     It’s not quite as easy to move on from my father, and I don’t really want to. I think about him a lot, sometimes with bits of regret that I needed to bring him into the public discussion of my life, sometimes with anger that he could be a jerk and was less a friend than I wanted him to be, but often with happy recollections of his wonderful qualities and antics, and deep sorrow that we weren’t closer than we were.
     When I watch the hit television program Mad Men, I think about Dad and Mom a lot. I identify easily with the public relations/advertising culture of smoking and drinking adults in showcase homes and tailored clothes from the 1960s that is being so aptly represented. That was my life as a child — cocktail parties, ashtrays full of cigarettes, black women who cleaned once a week and helped serve at occasional “fancy” dinners, eating the evening meal before Dad arrived home tired and prior to him having his martini or scotch, family trips to confession on Saturday and to church on Sunday, new cars in the driveway, younger men and women fawning over my father, their boss in the General Motors public relations department in Detroit, movie and television stars, and golf pros coming to the house for meals because of their work with Buick, clever family photo Christmas cards sent out to hundreds of people annually, dollars handed to cute kids who hung around the cigar smoke-clouded poker table, vacations to Key Biscayne, FL, in the winter, two foot tall bottles of scotch and ice cream sunday supplies sent by clients for the holidays, new outfits for Easter, fun gifts when Dad came home from road trips, envelopes for us kids full of pencils, pens, and paper brought home from the office — it was a grand, pampered life. We were the Kennedys, in my mind, with show tunes on the hifi, charades played in the living room, weddings at the country club, and never being told we couldn’t order something off the menu because it was too expensive. “Have a shrimp cocktail,” Dad would encourage.
     My father was exceedingly generous and thoughtful and my mother was the most decent lady you would have met. They lived for their children and took great pride in their family. Friends were always welcome at the house. Dad would stuff money in your pocket when you went off to school and they both would write letters if you were away at camp or in a student foreign exchange program. They laughed at my jokes and encouraged me to be outgoing. So, with good reason, I often think of my father fondly as a man with a kind, generous, playful heart.
     But nothing is neat and tidy, not life and not memories. Despite the seeming perfection of our lives to people whose nose might be pressed against the picture window in our living room, there most certainly was also emotional chaos, fear, feelings of inadequacy, envy, hatred, and pain. We just didn’t talk about it. (My estranged family would argue that I’m making up for lost time.)
     My oldest brother eloped with his pregnant girlfriend the night of their senior prom and divorced her years later after they had five children. My older sister, who blamed herself for the death of a young brother when she was only four, and who played mother to us all, was physically abused by a former Marine boyfriend. The baby born before me was bitten by the family dog and died as a result, a subject we were never allowed to discuss for fear of making my mother cry. All three living sons competed in vain for the unattainable complete affirmation of my father. Sibling rivalries, not uncommon in other families, were nurtured by the disfunctional roots of the extended family. The youngest child was born with multiple birth defects and died after fifteen months. Political arguments pulled father and sons apart and kept the women in the house on edge — the war in Vietnam, Ralph Nader, Caesar Chavez, the Catholic Church, General Motors investments in South Africa, Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, free speech, college demonstrations, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, and, of course, coming out publicly. Add to that childhood sexual confusion from inappropriate touch and you get the picture. Or do you?
     My father was of the mind that your children were not your friends but your responsibilities. He was the father who sacrificed much and deserved respect. Such distance between parent and child was always maintained with him, though not by my mother. Dad could occasionally be mean with his words and debilitating with his glare. But he also had a wonderful smile and laugh, and he could surprise you with his thoughtful, generous behavior — remembering your favorite wine so that it was waiting your arrival back home, dancing a jig with Mom around the Christmas tree, praising you behind your back to others, fianancially caring for Mom’s parents and aunts and uncles.
     Dad’s been dead for almost fifteen years. Images of him will be with me until I die. Emotional reactions to those images will be mixed. Sometimes I cringe and sometimes I smile. Sometimes I feel great anger and sometimes I laugh out loud. My feelings aren’t neat and tidy. My relationship with Dad wasn’t neat and tidy. He helped make me the man I am today — screwed up, at peace, confused, centered, a big mess, and a happy camper. Not neat and very untidy.
     The readers of my book were able to discern that easier than were members of my family. Life is not black and white. We are not either angels or monsters. We are not either the Kennedys or the Manson family. We’re both and all. My Dad was. I am. You are. Not neat. Not tidy. But alive today with the ability to make choices.    
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Friday, October 17, 2008

A Provincetown Gathering of Friends

     This Sunday is a really big day for our Provincetown family. Seventeen of us will gather at Ray’s and my home at 5 p.m. for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner prior to us heading south. Everyone looks forward to it with great excitement. Some of us have been cooking for days.

     Each person or couple brings a food dish that is part of their important memories of Thanksgiving or other holidays. I’ll be cooking a couple of turkeys and my very famous dressing and gravy. Ray will bake three incredible pumpkin-pecan pies. Tom and David are bringing their yummy mashed potatoes. Chip and Jean have prepared a delicious and unique cranberry sauce, as well as creamed onions. Gregg and Scott are going to surprise us with a terrific green vegetable. Manny, who grew up in Portugal, and John, who grew up in Ireland, are bringing a pea and Portuguese sausage dish that Manny’s mother made each Christmas and which sounds wonderful. Michael, who grew up in an enormous Boston Irish family, is preparing turnip. Sharon and Patsy are making Simis, a great combination of sweet potato, carrot, and prune that Sharon had on holidays in her Jewish home. Harriet and Ann are bringing wine, and Kath and Kim will come bearing dark chocolates.

       When they arrive, everyone will gather around the big screen television upstairs in the family room for a sensational half-hour DVD collection by Ray of photos of the year set to the music of the We Five, a group from the ‘70s that all of us are old enough to fondly remember. The program begins with shots of us at last year’s gathering and takes us through the Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year’s holidays, everyone’s birthdays (including Ann‘s big bash for her 65th attended by two U.S. Congressmen, the Mayor of Boston, and one or two state representatives), spreading at low tide Ray’s beloved-brother Bob’s ashes with his sons on the Fourth of July, water skiing and tubing with the grandchildren, friends, and assorted kids from the beach, games of Hearts and of Mexican Train, an elaborate picnic meal at the Boston Pops concert in Hyannis, the big bonfire on the beach with hot dogs and s’mores, the tall ships, pirate ship, and Rosie’s cruise ship in the harbor, lunch in Chip’s dune shack, bocce on the back lawn, me dressed as Zorro and Kath, Kim, Ann, and Patsy dressed as cowgirls for Carnival, our beautiful flower garden, heron and squirrel shots, visits from friends and family, the publishing of my new book, an x-ray of Ray’s disc surgery, the fall of Lehman Brothers, the death of PT, the beloved three-legged dog of Chip and Jean, sunsets and full moons over Captain Jack’s Wharf in Provincetown Harbor, the “Brian and Ray” gently bobbing on the waves, and finally back to a photo of Ray standing proudly next to his pumpkin-pecan pies. There will then be long and loud applause for Ray and the repeated statement of  “I want a copy of that.”

      The photos of the past year will remind us all of how fortunate we are to belong to such a loving group of friends, to live in such a safe and beautiful place, and to have had so much fun together in such a short period of time. We’ll then gather around the elaborately-decorated table in folding chairs borrowed from the West End Racing Club. We’ll hold hands, spend a moment looking from person to person, and then I’ll make comments on the significance of this particular Thanksgiving celebration. (It doesn’t escape me that while we seven gay and lesbian couples, and one straight couple, all of whom have been together an average of 25 years, are holding hands around the table, the voters in California, Florida, and Arizona are preparing to vote on whether our loving unions should be granted the status of marriage in the eyes of the state.)

     Following my words of inspiration, organized chaos ensues as the helpers (there’s one in every couple, two in some) jump up to dish up and serve the plates. Oohs and aahs will fill the room for the next five minutes as we each compliment the chefs on their unique contributions to the meal. We’ll then end up in multiple conversations about the upcoming election and the status of the marriage vote in California, the cost of real estate,  town problems (Sharon is the Town Manager), local gossip, holiday plans, the health of friends and family members (Tom’s mom has breast cancer), Ray’s recovery from shoulder surgery, the sadness that the “Brian and Ray” is in dry dock for the winter, good and bad new television programs and movies, and how those of us who are heading south soon will miss those of us who are spending the winter in Provincetown and vice versa. All of this, of course, will be photographed by Ray for next year’s pre-dinner program.

      Ray’s delicious pies, with or without ice cream, but all with whipped cream, and dark chocolates will be enjoyed with more chatter and, as time allows, possibly a game of Mexican Train, a game of dominoes that has filed many of our nights together in groups of four, six, eight, and larger.

      Sometimes I feel as if I could weep because there is so much joy and beauty in my life. That does not mean there isn’t any pain or loss. We’ve had a great deal of both this year. But we create our own suffering and we create our own happiness, and we can either sit around and be miserable about the effect of Lehman’s demise on our life, and other challenges, or we can play. We prefer to do the latter, and for the opportunity and the wisdom to do just that, I give thanks.

 

 

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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Decent or Indecent?

 

     Is Father Geoffrey Farrow of the Saint John Newman Center at the University of California Fresno a decent or indecent man?

     The now openly-gay man recently delivered a homily that spoke out against Proposition 8. In doing so, he countermanded the order of the state’s bishops to rally Catholics against gay marriage.

     “In directing the faithful to vote ‘yes’ on Proposition 8,” he said, “the California bishops are not only entering the political arena, they are ignoring the advances and insights of neurology, psychology and the very statements by the Church itself that homosexuality is innate…I know that these words of truth will cost me dearly. But to withhold them would be far more costly and I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian couples, not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well.”

     I want to proclaim from the rooftops that “Geoff Farrow is a thoroughly decent man.” But I looked up the definition of “decent”, and alas, I fear that he’s not “marked by conformity to traditional standards of propriety or morality; free (to my knowledge) of vulgarity or immodesty; meeting accepted standards; obliging; or properly or modestly dressed.”

     As one who, along with Ray in his respective parish in Wichita, stood once a year during Mass and recited “The Pledge of the Legion of Decency,” you would think I would know the definition of the word and not mistakenly apply it to Fr. Farrow.

     After blessing myself, I and all other Catholics stood and said “I condemn all indecent and immoral motion picture, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.”

     The Catholic Legion of Decency, which was created in 1934 and morphed into the National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures in 1965, condemned with a “C” any film they deemed objectionable, such as Carrie, The Omen, Grease, All That Jazz, American Gigolo, Billy Jack, I Am Curious Yellow, A Clockwork Orange, The Last Picture Show, and the Last Tango in Paris. It was a mortal sin to see these films.

     The truth be told, as a teenager I used to check out the Catholic film list in our weekly Catholic newspaper and hope to find one that was rated “C.” I stayed up late and snuck downstairs after my folks went to bed  to watched Woman of Rome  because it had been condemned by the Catholic Church’s Legion of Decency. To my great disappointment, the film got a “C” because it showed a woman’s breasts and not because there were any naked men. What a waste of getting a mortal sin. 

     The rating “C” eventually morphed into the letter “O” which meant that the film was “morally offensive.”

     Wait just a minute, just one little minute. I get it. I think I get it. Fr. Geoffrey Farrow  must have taken “The Pledge of the Legion of Decency” too. He can’t be that much younger than Ray and me. He too must have stood up, blessed himself, and promised to condemn indecent and immoral motion pictures, and all those who glorify crimes or criminals..to form a right conscience about that which was dangerous to his moral life. It seems though that Fr. Farrow just took the pledge with a little too much thought and sincerity. Instead of simply limiting himself to the words of the pledge, he completely embraced the spirit of the pledge. Instead of restricting himself to films that were “morally offensive” he included people and behaviors that were morally offensive and dangerous to his moral life. That’s why he condemned the bishops and their efforts to get Catholics in California to oppose the sanctity of gay marriage. Had he done what the bishops told him to do, he would have violated his pledge by glorifying crimes (against embracing gay people) and criminals (those who spew intolerance in the name of God, and dress immoderately.)

     To paraphrase the philospher Edmund Burke, “All that must happen for evil to triumph is for good people to sit by and do nothing.”

     Why then, one coud certainly argue that Fr. Geoffrey Farrow is a thoroughly decent man. He stood up and fought back against what he experienced as evil. He did, as he promised, to “do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against” indecent and immoral behavior. On behalf of all other members of the Legion of Decency, Geoff gave the bishops of California and their mean-spirited campaign an “O” rating.

     The problem with the definition of “decent” as found in the dictionary is its reference to “conformity to traditional standards of propriety or morality.” What are the traditional standards of propriety and morality? At one time it was “See how these Christians love one another.” Standards change, as the Connecticut, California, and Massachusetts Supreme Courts have all told us in their majority decisions in favor of gay marriage. It seems to me that Fr. Farrow is adhering to a much higher, more reliably Christian standard of propriety and morality than are his bishops. 

     At the age of 57, on his deathbed and humiliated by his rapid drop in power and influence, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, former Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII of England, lamented “If I had served my God as diligently as I did my king, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”

     I’m not sure what the last part of that sentence means, unless Wolsey thought he would live longer if he hadn’t sold out his experience of God, but I suspect the Catholic prelate was cursing his lack of spiritual decency and his life rating of an “O.”

     One might just as easily imagine the Catholic bishops of California, as well as almost all of them throughout the United States and in the Vatican, making the same deathbed statement of regret. “Had I served my God as diligently as I did my Pope, He would not have allowed me to fail so miserably as a member of The Legion of Decency and of the human family.”

     We must all thank Fr. Geoffrey Farrow for his conviction, his courage, and what will surely be his sacrifice. It’s the only decent thing for us to do. 

 

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Sunday, October 5, 2008

Where Do We Go From Here?

     To say these are rough times financially is like saying that Representative Barney Frank is the hero of the year in Washington for guiding Congress and the nation through the financial rescue minefield. Both are statements of the obvious. We’re in trouble. I love Barney.

     I just got back from the Grand Union grocery store in Provincetown where several of my buddies who work there said that everyone on the staff was in tears yesterday. It was announced that the GU in Bourne, MA, is being closed, so the local employees expect to lose their union seniority when the Bourne employees are sent here. Some of them will lose their jobs and their means of supporting their families in a town that shrinks from 40,000 to less than 3,700 people in the winter.

     Ray and I, and many of our friends, lost a lot of money with the collapse of Wall Street and we’ll survive. But my Jamaican cab driver in Toronto this week, who borrowed $180,000 to buy his livery license, is terrified that he won’t be able to support his three youngsters and wife if the collapse of the U.S. economy sends a tidal wave of cutbacks his way. People who trim expenses like going on vacation or even to the theater no longer need a cab to get them around.

     But, darn it, if Sarah Palin and John McCain get elected in a few weeks by this country’s “soccer moms and Joe six-packs” to lead us as a nation in the next four to eight years, well, God bless ya’, we’ll be just fine, according to Sarah.

     “Please don’t let that happen,” pleaded my driver from the airport in Montreal just four days ago. “I have lived in Canada for twenty years but I was born in Iraq. Everyone I know there wishes that Saddam was back, even those he put in jail. George Bush has destroyed our country. McCain will keep doing the same.”

     “What is with this Palin woman?” asked the horrified Australian woman across the aisle from me on the flight into Canada. “Will Americans really vote her in?”

     “We’re watching your election closer than we are watching ours,” said the French Canadian Executive Vice President who opened my session with her peers. “We’re holding our breath,” said another. “The U.S. used to be a country that we admired.”

     “Whenever I travel today,” explained my driver back in Boston, “I get a very bad reaction to my U.S. passport. It used to be something I handed over proudly and it was received with smiles. Now people hate us. Everywhere. They see my passport and they scowl.”

     I warned the Canadian bankers that Ray and I, and everyone we know, are planning on moving to Canada if McCain and Palin get elected, but then I acknowledged that in truth I’ve been threatening to do that since Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew were in the White House. “It’s cold up here,” warned an executive.

    The United States as a country will survive, I’m sure, if Palin and McCain get elected but the lives of nearly all Americans and millions of people throughout the world will be dramatically impacted for the worse.

     Sometimes I want to cry, I get so frustrated with inept politicians and the stupid people in the U.S. who vote them into office, like gay Republicans who say they are “fiscal conservatives,” or women who have had abortions but now feel that no one else should have one, or people who want to reward John McCain for his suffering as a POW in Vietnam forty years ago or Sarah Palin because she has a young child with Down Syndrome.

     Though it has been strongly recommended that I do so, I won’t be calling and writing family members and childhood friends this time around. I did that in the past two elections and got so angry and hurt by their lack of response that I don’t want to walk into that victimization trap again. (Most of them are not talking to me anyway because of my most recent book.) I figure, if people are so stupid to vote Palin into the vice-presidency and McCain into the presidency, they deserve to have them as their leaders and they deserve all of the destruction they will bring to the quality of their lives.

     But, I suspect that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to win the election despite some of my former childhood friends and family members. Some people think it may even be a landslide but I’m not counting on that. One vote difference is enough for me. And I don’t imagine that if they win that suddenly all of our lives are going to change back to the way they were before George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were elected president and vice-president eight years ago when the price of a gallon of gas was one dollar. The country will remain for a long while in financial uncertainty. Some of my friends at the GU grocery store will still lose their jobs and not know how to put food on the table for their families. The cab driver in Toronto will feel the impact of our recession on his life. But, the majority of this country and of the world will face the future with a lot more hope and confidence that better days are ahead, especially those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. It will become more likely that we all will be able to hand over our U.S. passports to people who will smile and say “We like your president.” Fewer people will feel depressed.

     I look forward to November 4 and the opportunity to help turn this wonderful country of ours around. It will be fun to be proud to be American again. Hang on everyone. The U.S. is coming back.

 

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