Are You Guys Brothers?

Ray and I had dinner tonight at the Lobster Pot in Provincetown with our dear friends Tom and David, Ann and Harriet, and Kath and Kim. Kath's dad Bob was also with us, as well as David Bedard, who is running for Selectman locally. The meal followed a fundraiser that Tom, David's treasurer, helped organize. Ray hates political events, especially fundraisers, but we wanted to support Tom and we knew that we would end up having dinner with our great circle of friends.
During dinner, Ann, Harriet, David and I talked about the dynamics of living in a small town and how one drawback is the amount of maneuvering that is required around local "personalities" -- egos that need to be accommodated, and pleasantries that need to be exchanged. In a big city like Ft. Lauderdale, to which all of us escape in the winter, it's easier to avoid such draining exercises. Harriet said, "I don't have time for any of it. I'm much too busy and life is much too short to bother with people I don't like or want to have anything to do with."
That's one of the reasons we all relax in each other's company and why we choose to spend so much of our precious time together. When it's just our little family, no one feels the need to make an impression. Everyone trusts that they are loved.
What follows is the second half of the chapter from my book Are You Guys Brothers? which deals with Ray's and my experiences of choosing friends.

It’s the advice I consistently give to gay men and women who write to me and say that they are just coming out. It’s the advice I’d give to every heterosexual I know too. The people with whom we surround ourselves have a very powerful influence on the direction of our lives, most especially our physical and spiritual health.

     Friends, I believe, should be sought or avoided on their ability to prompt healthy and continual growth. It is in rich soil that we seek to plant ourselves, not in toxic waste. Hope and cynicism are both contagious. Values rub off but not away. If we choose our traveling companions wisely, we’ll enjoy life’s beauty and joy, even when the sky is overcast. If we opt to hang out with “dementors,” we’ll complain that the sun is too bright or the smell of the rose is too strong. 

     Regrettably, many of us make friends with people because they like us. Not, who are like us, but rather who like us. All someone has had to do in the past is say that they loved one of my books and they were immediately endeared to me. That’s not a good basis for friendship, but their faces nevertheless pop up in our photo albums.

     Worse than that, I’ve also been attracted to people who need me. I’m a co-dependent magnet for anyone who feels weak, frightened, unhappy, or unloved. It’s fun for me for awhile to respond with friendship because I feel so useful, but then they don’t go away. And when I pull back, they get really angry with me. There are many photos of such people in the albums too.

     Worse yet, is the mistake of making friends with people because you find them physically attractive. I have found that thinking with your genitals will always get you in trouble. I’ve been a “dick head” more than once and live with the embarrassment.

     Trying to create long-term intimacy in a friendship that’s just based upon people liking or needing you, or to whom you are attracted, is doomed to failure. Intimacy is most available to us with people with whom we feel equal, not economically, but emotionally and spiritually.

     Many of us make friends with people with whom we share characteristics. Gay men, in general, hang out with gay men. Lesbians frequently hang out with other lesbians. Transgender people hang out with other transgender people (but typically not transsexuals with cross-dressers). Conservative Republicans hang out with conservative Republicans.

     When I’m in the cafeteria of any major corporation, I notice that most of the black people are sitting together, and most of the Asians are sitting together, and most of the Latinos are sitting together, and most of the heavyset people are sitting together. They’re not close friends. They seem to just feel safer in each other’s company. But does the relationship last outside of the workplace? Are they in each other’s photo albums?

     My single friends hang out with single people. Hanging out with couples makes them feel self-conscious. But are the single people they’re hanging out with healthy? Do they drink too much or take recreational drugs? Are they racist, sexist, ageist, or classist? If so, what kind of influence do they have on the attitudes and behaviors of the other single people in their group?

     If newly out single gay people fall in with a crowd of gay people who affirm themselves as healthy and normal, it impacts the self-esteem of the gay “newbie.” If the crowd is closeted, self-deprecating out of internalized heterosexism, and self-conscious of what heterosexuals think of them, the gay newbie will follow suit.

     If heterosexual men hang out with other heterosexual men who are homophobic, they’ll find it hard to speak up and challenge the group when they start in on “fags.” People who fear loss of status in a group are generally the most complicit in hate crimes and other forms of harassment. Thinking as individuals is most challenging in the Armed Forces, police departments, country clubs, circuit parties, and in fundamentalist churches.

     Years ago, my best friend in eighth grade entered the seminary. While in high school and early college, he and his fellow liberal seminarians and I would sing with great emotion Simon and Garfunkel’s haunting ballad, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” We looked at each other as we sang “when evening falls so hard, I will comfort you. I’m by your side, when darkness comes, and like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down.” When I came out as gay a couple of years later, they all scattered in silence. The rejection of my former best friend was most painful for me at the time. “Hey, darkness has fallen. I’ve lost my job. I’m getting hate mail and threatening phone calls. I need comfort!”

     We were all young, inexperienced, untested, and idealistic, so I understand now why the song lyrics were an ideal and not a plan of action. My heterosexual friend took his cues at the time from the frightened others, or they from him. He did come around years later after leaving the seminary to enter an interracial marriage that horrified and caused rejection by his liberal parents. We reconnected. People who have been beaten up by life hang out together too.

     Emotional intimacy between friends, particularly between men, is a challenging thing. For me, intimacy is the heart of the watermelon, and worth the challenge of getting to it. It’s the sweetest part of friendship. It’s experienced as trust and is impossible without honesty. Many of us have flashes of it in our lives, like quick peeks or tiny tastes of something special. To maintain intimacy takes work, and sometimes lots and lots of work. And both sides have to participate in the work. Both sides have to share the goal of intimacy and be willing to sacrifice for it.

     Ray and I are very intimate with each other, but we’ve worked really, really hard at it. We’ve struggled through over three decades of let downs, distancing endeavors, and stagnation in growth. We’ve had dozens of moments when we each were simultaneously thinking through which belongings we would take with us to our separate apartments. But we keep holding on, believing that the good we share far outweighs the challenges, and the lives we would have living apart from one another would pale by comparison to the joys we experience together.

     We’ve lost to estrangement more than a few friends with whom we thought we had great intimacy, including family members. Some friends with whom we’ve shared many years and many experiences have drifted away after a struggle because the payoff for being close friends no longer outweighed the work that it required.

     I miss all of the best friends who have moved in different directions. I don’t begrudge them their journeys. Perhaps they found walking with us was not good for their health, physically or spiritually. Their photos which sit around the house and in our albums remind me of the good times we shared.

     Gratefully, others have stepped in to take their space in our inner circles. Their pictures dominate the pages of the most recently compiled albums and are placed at eye level on the book shelves. We are wiser and more discriminating in our choices of friends than we were thirty-two years ago, and we are better friends to them because of the lessons we learned in our attempts to build and maintain friendships in the past.

     We sadly acknowledge, that these faces too will pass, because all things change. Nothing stays the same, except that which appears in a photo album, and only when you keep buying more to fill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a cold, rainy day in Provincetown --- a good time to read and take a nap.
I'm still waiting on Author House to return my corrected galley. It feels like an eternity since I sent in needed changes.
As we move forward with the book here, I've decided to hold back chapters six and seven which deal with sexual abuse and alcoholism. I want both chapters to be read in the context of the others in the book. Chapter eight deals with the friends Ray and I have made over the past thirty-plus years. Many of them are not still in our lives.

 There are forty-three leather-bound photo albums in our bookcase which chronicle the life Ray and I have made or experienced together since May 4, 1976. From the beautiful woods of St. Joseph’s Abbey, the Trappist monastery in Western Massachusetts where which we would annually cut down our Christmas tree, to a remote village in Ghana where we enthusiastically joined the locals in festively flapping our elbows in a “chicken” dance, the photos capture two young men who are working hard but happily to find or create a safe place for their intimate love.

     Jeremy, our Irish setter, now buried beneath a pine tree in Gloucester near the grave of our canary, Bing Crosby, appears in most of the activities of our first thirteen years. Brit, our yellow Lab, now buried beneath the pine tree in Provincetown, was with us for fifteen more. They appear in hundreds of photos.

     There are shots of Ray and me, with Jeremy at our side, young and excited, stringing popcorn and cranberries as the primary ornaments of our earliest Christmas trees in Boston, and of Ray and me, with Brit at our feet, older and yet still excited, trying to find space for the hundreds of accumulated ornaments, each with its own story, for the on-line purchased fresh tree in Florida three decades later. In one album, we have hippy-length hair and big smiles as we’re admiring pigs and sheep at the Deerfield Country Fair in New Hampshire, and in another our gray hair is cut stylishly short as we’re swimming with sea lions in the Galapagos in Ecuador.

     As we both love wildlife, there are abundant photos of them in the albums, a Noah’s Ark of lions, giraffes, whales, elephants, cows, horses, zebras, penguins, seals, turkeys, leopards, mountain goats, bear, moose, elk, salmon, water buffalo, monkeys, and chipmunks, to name just a few. There are also many photos of architectural and natural wonders – ancient ruins, cathedrals, waterfalls, canyons, fishing shacks, forests, monuments, rivers, and gardens.

     Mostly there are shots of friends – friends, friends, and more friends.

     I have fantasies of sitting with these sacred keepsakes on my lap as I lie in bed in old age and prepare for death. I want the luxury of slowly recalling the people, places, and things which have so influenced our lives and given it such flavor. Doing so will remind me, as I try to remind myself each day, of how extraordinarily blessed I have been to have had such an amazing life companion, to have lived in such wonderful cities and homes, to have visited so many interesting places, to have “followed my bliss” in work, to have found a spiritual path that was so rewarding, and to have encountered so many remarkable people who have generously allowed us to share in their lives and accepted the invitation to participate in ours. I’m particularly grateful for the friends, gay and straight, male and female, with whom we have shared ourselves so intimately.

     Our companions along the way have, for the most part, come and gone. Few faces which appeared regularly in the first assembled album are still in our lives today. Yet each plastic page holds the treasured images of people by whom we have been influenced and who we will never forget. They are grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, visitors to our homes, business colleagues, neighbors, and former strangers we have met on our vacations.

     There are photos of well-known actresses and actors, politicians, writers, network commentators and newscasters, children’s book authors, civil rights personalities, sexuality educators, and priests and nuns, as well as far less publicly-known, but generally more dear to us, social workers, house painters, librarians, teachers, real estate agents, house cleaners, decorators,  fishermen, lawyers, doctors, gardeners, retirees, and the unemployed, among others.

     Our parents and grandparents are all dead, as are two older brothers, and many, many of our friends. The particulars of all of the settings have changed too, as nothing in life stays the same. Our renovated homes in Brookline, Gloucester, Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, and Naples have all been altered by new owners, Walden Pond is more trafficked, as is Machu Pichu, the Mariposa Hotel in Costa Rica now caters to heterosexuals, other vacation havens have closed, Detroit has deteriorated, Wichita has grown, and all else moves on.

     Perusing these pages in bed in my old age will undoubtedly remind me of some of the lessons I have learned along the way. One, of course, is that everything changes. Another is to choose your friends wisely.

 

     Tonight’s the magical night of our family Christmas dinner. Tonight we gather with Ann and Harriet, and Tom and David for our annual evening of holiday gift giving, good food, and a lively game of Hearts. We do so in a living room lit by abundant candles and a nine foot decorated tree, a mantle filled with twinkle lights, leaves, and fruit, and snow-covered trees and angels from every culture in every corner.

     The center of the dining room table is Santa’s Village where a moving train circles a North Pole scene of reindeer being readied for their flight, elves carrying gifts and candy canes, and Santa reading over his list. Snowflakes hang from the chandelier, almost touching the snow-covered trees that fill each open space. Red, handmade place cards with snowflakes designate seating. Large elves sit at the side of each plate. These will be taken home as tokens of remembrance.

     We’ll start with gift-giving. Ann will have her Diet Coke and a slice of lemon. David and Harriet will each have one glass of Merlot. Tom will drink a Diet Dr. Pepper. Ray will have his Diet Pepsi, and I’ll have water without ice, but with a slice of lemon. Ann will gather all of the discarded wrapping paper as the others join me in the kitchen and dining room to serve the meal. Everyone has a task and knows it well.

     This evening, we’re starting with artichokes and a wonderful dipping sauce of curry, sour cream, lemon, mayonnaise, garlic, and cumin. Cream of spinach soup is the second course. Each bowl will be garnished with slivered almonds. For the main course, we’re having tomato cheese pie, asparagus, and a sliced avocado and melon salad.

     We’ll then head upstairs for a game of Hearts. In addition to the traditional rules, we play that the ten of spades is ten points against you and the jack of diamonds is ten points off your score. On the table will be jellied fruit slices and dark chocolate turtles. After a round or two of cards, Ray will serve his homemade Christmas cookies, shaped like snowflakes and covered with white icing.

     The evening will end by nine. Ray and I will have little to do, because everyone stays until all of the dishes are done and the house is put back in order. In a week, we’ll do this again here on Christmas Eve with Tom and David, and Tom’s parents George and Kate. The next day, we’ll join them in their home for dinner and gift giving. Ann and Harriet will be back in Massachusetts for the holiday with their four beloved grandchildren and children.

     As I write all of this, I have vivid images of Barbara Stanwyck typing her fabricated description of the make-believe Christmas she planned for her imaginary farm in Connecticut. In the next scene of Christmas in Connecticut a wounded GI in an infirmary is reading her description aloud and salivating at the thought of such a sumptuous meal being consumed in such a romantic setting. He longed to share in her dream. As anyone who has seen the holiday classic film knows, he gets his wish and she has to quickly figure out a way to find a farm in Connecticut for Christmas and create a meal she is ill-prepared to do.

     When I imagine someone reading the description of my plans for tonight, I imagine them saying, “Hey, honey, read this. It’ll give you a toothache.”

     I agree. The description of our magical family gathering is so sweet that unless you know it to be true, it will give you a toothache. And even trusting that it’s true, you may still feel that I and my friends are hopeless romantics caught in a time warp and out of touch with the plight of the rest of the world. You’d be wrong about most of that, but you might feel that.

     I am a romantic when it comes to the holidays. Traditions hold a lot of meaning for Ray and me. We don’t cling to them but we enjoy them.

     When December 26 comes, we’re very ready for the holidays to be over. In fact, Ray and I traditionally take down the tree and clean out the house and yard of all decorations that day. No more Christmas carols are allowed in our home for another 11 months. “Thank you” notes are written for gifts received, and the clean calendar for the New Year is opened with delight. But between Thanksgiving and Christmas, romance rules the day.

     Every year, I make turkey soup from the carcass of the Thanksgiving bird and we have the soup the night the tree is decorated a couple of weeks later. Friends now look forward to that event.

     Every year, we decorate the outside and inside of the house, tastefully I’d say, with white lights, wreaths, old fashioned Santa figures, greens, red ribbons, angels, crèches, and candles. Every year the centerpiece of the dining room table is elaborate and whimsical.

     The goal is to create holiday magic so that we and everyone who enters our home has every fantasy about the holidays they’ve had since childhood fulfilled. “This is a winter wonderland,” a friend said yesterday when entering our Ft. Lauderdale home. Success!

     Every year, we hang from our mantel stockings knitted by an 80-year-old Polish woman in Concord, MA, thirty years ago. We asked her to make five, one for each of us, one for our gay brothers David and Tom, and one for our Irish Setter at the time, Jeremy. Stockings are filled with small wrapped gifts, each with an obtuse description of what’s within. When I was a child, stockings were opened on Christmas Eve, along with gifts from one another. Santa’s gifts arrived on Christmas morning, and were opened quickly before we went to Mass.

     Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we celebrate Hanukkah with Harriet and Ann. Harriet didn’t really celebrate Hanukkah as a child, but has adopted it as her gift to all of us each year. She fills the table with deli-bought corned beef, chicken salad, chopped liver, herring, potato pancakes, matzo ball soup, Koogler, and assorted other delicacies.

     Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Ray and I also watch a series of seasonal films. Our favorite is A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim. We also love It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, White Christmas, Scrooge, The Bishop’s Wife, and, of course Christmas in Connecticut, among others.

     On Christmas Eve, we always have potato-leek soup. This year, I plan to serve George and Kate, and Tom and David, salmon, spinach-cheese pie, and beets. (You have to get red and green on the plate somehow.)  We’ll play Hearts with George and Kate that evening too.

     On Christmas morning, Ray and I will have a wonderful Danish kringle that we order from O and H Bakery in Wisconsin, something that I’ve had over the holidays since I was a child. Ray will make himself a large coffee and me a hot chocolate. We’ll then open our gifts to each other. We’ve cut back a bit, so it doesn’t take all morning any longer, but it’s lots of fun. We’ll then have bacon and eggs, a once-a-week treat, clean up, watch a holiday movie that makes us cry, and go to Tom and David’s festive home next door for gift giving with Kate and George and Tom and David, then a delicious ham dinner, and a great game of Hearts.

     Add to those rituals weeks of packages arriving and packages being sent, wrapping each other’s gifts in secret and hiding them under designated beds, cards written and cards received, calls made and calls received, visits to friends and visits from friends, and you get the feel of the holidays at our house. It’s all lots of fun. It’s all very exciting to create. It’s all very tiring. And as much as we love it, we’re glad to put the boxes of decorations away for another year.

     We have no illusions that this is how everyone celebrates Christmas. Our good friend Paul Shanley is in prison and we know he experiences the holidays very differently than we do. There are thousands of local people who can’t afford to buy gifts for their children. There are millions of gay and straight people without anyone to share a meal. So we don’t take our lives for granted nor do we take our bounty lightly. We do whatever we can to improve the conditions of those who are less fortunate than us, and we commit ourselves to enjoying each moment we have together.

     Ray and I make no assumptions about the New Year. We hope to have another Christmas together and we hope our current friends stay close. But things change. They always do. That’s life. Yet, regardless of how circumstances change, we can still keep the romance of the season in our hearts. We can make turkey soup when we put up the tree or open a can of Progresso when we decorate the artificial tabletop one. We can make our potato-leek soup for Christmas Eve or rely on Campbell’s for the next best thing. And if we’re all alone, we can have that soup on a folding table in front of the television and watch Christmas in Connecticut and remember that whether it’s fantasy or reality, the joy comes in allowing the magic into your hearts and minds, if just for the moment, and even if it gives you a toothache.

    From our house to yours, best wishes for a magical holiday season.