Mel's Blog

Driving Through Rabbits  My friend Denise and I had planned our trip from Cincinnati as well as we could. We both would need our cars in California so we decided to drive separately, together. We didn’t know how long it will take us to get to there, but we figured it would take five or six days. Looking back from an era when we have electronic supports for maps, planning, and finding resources along the route, it seems like a rather risky and difficult trip to undertake, but at the time it seemed ordinary. I can’t imagine now taking off and driving across the country not knowing where we would stay, or the exact path from day to day. But that’s what we did.             We left on the morning of June 5, 1981, and headed west. Through the use of flashing our headlights and beeping our horns we signaled to each other when we need to pull over to go to a rest stop, or to get something to eat at a restaurant. There we would plan our next leg of our journey, including looking for a h

Panic in the Break Room The Flood Building stands at Fifth and Market in downtown San Francisco. It was built before the 1906 earthquake and was considered one of the new “skyscrapers” at the time. Now it’s dwarfed between real skyscrapers, but it holds onto a classy style of architecture with certain elements that no longer exist. The doorway and windows have carved ornamentation. There is a solidity, an ornate heaviness which proclaims stability and protection for the people inside.   There are marble floors in the hallways, real wooden stalls in the bathrooms, and windows that actually open to let in fresh air during the many nice days enjoyed by the city.             In the early 1980s I was working for a health insurance company whose offices were in the grand old Flood Building. Each morning I would emerge out of the MUNI station after my commute from the Sunset neighborhood, and come up to meet the decorated façade. The antique elevator, with its folding gates, would tak

Kenny One of the first people I met when moved to San Francisco in 1981 was Ken Stevenson. He and I were both in our 20s. He came from Maine and talked about harvesting potatoes. When we were pigging out with some delicious food he’d cackle, “As my grandmother used to say, ‘Slow down! Food was meant to save a life, not take it!”’ I was from Ohio and both sides of my family were farmers, so I understood his potato references. And we both loved our grandmothers dearly. Actually, Kenny and I were similar in several ways. He and I had both been part of Catholic religious communities, had unaccepting families, and had moved to San Francisco to begin constructing our new lives. We met in church, at a Dignity mass for gay Catholics, and became fast friends. We would spend a lot of time together because we lived very close to each other. And because we genuinely liked each other. We laughed at each other’s stories, hung out at bars together, and talked about dating the various man availab

Disinvited In the spring of one of those years in the late 80s I heard that my youngest brother was going to get married. Weddings are always huge family events, with many of the plans happening at all intervals and in chaotic ways. Vince decided that he didn’t want to go in so I made reservations to fly alone. I would use that time to reconnect with some old friends in Cincinnati, Jimmy with whom I was especially close, and my cousin Paul. I was happy and relieved that Paul and Jimmy had become friends because I had felt guilty about leaving both of them behind when I moved to San Francisco. Sometimes we get so absorbed in our day-to-day lives that we don’t realize how much time is past. But suddenly it was three weeks before Kevin’s wedding and I have not received an invitation. Not unheard of since the formal invitations were more of an obligatory detail rather than an actual guest reference. Yet even in a family as large as mine this was an unusual oversight. I called my mot

I Can’t Do This Any More After Kenny had died in late 1986, it seemed like the deaths were coming ever more frequently. The local gay newspapers ran obituaries, and those columns were taking over more pages of the newspapers as time went on. On Sunday evenings at church we would pray for the sick and the dead and I began to get anxious at the thought of what new names we would hear. Several hundred gay men came to worship together. The chatter at the social afterwards would always include questions about whether we had heard about so-and-so who was newly sick, or so-and-so who had just died. It wasn’t just at our church, but this was the situation at every gay gathering. AIDS, and those who suffered from it, became the ever-present topics of discussion instead of fashion, music, and movie stars. It seemed like just after we had experienced gay liberation all the fun stuff about being gay had been taken away. One Saturday afternoon Vince and I had gone to yet another funeral and

Crazy with Fear The media was relentless. Every day there was some news about some possible treatment, some possible discovery, some possible cure. Most of this was just so much verbal electronic spinning. First such news would bring optimism and hope, and then when the newest promise fell through, it would again stoke our fears and incite panic. There was nothing any of us could do. Monogamy helped, unless one’s boyfriend cheated, which happened. How terribly tragic to think that you had trusted a man with your body and your health only to find out that he infected you, and now you were both on your way to an early death. I heard such stories and did my best to ignore them. I felt like a child who claps their ears and says, “nah, nah, nah,” to drown out someone who’s telling them something they don’t want to hear. There were times when the only peace I could find was when I was with my friends or Vince and I was totally absorbed into the present moment of whatever we were doing.

Conception and Pregnancy in a New Way              Late summer, 1989. My friend Tom Rust had talked my partner Vince and me into going to a meeting put on by Alameda County Social Services to learn about the process of adoption. Tom was not in a relationship at the time and was somewhat interested in adopting as a single man. Vince and I have been together for nearly 7 years. Adoption was an idea we had entertained and discussed with various people, even gone to an informal gathering, of mostly lesbians, to talk about the possibility and various methods of getting a child. After a few years together, we had wanted to expand our relationship. In straight relationships the natural thing to do is to have a child. And for straight people it’s usually pretty easy: just stop doing birth control. That was not one of our options! Many gay couples get cats or dogs and refer to them as their children, but that didn’t interest us. I had been a paperboy and so did not want a dog, a

Quick! Give Us Everything We Need! As the Chinese would say, it was an auspicious day! Saturday, June 23, 1990, is the day that our first son arrived in our home. At the meeting the afternoon before we were told to expect the delivery about 11:00. Our social worker had told us not to buy things or prepare a room, because we didn’t know what the age of the child we would get would be, or even if we would get one. To prepare a nursery would just set oneself up for pain, longing, and possibly disappointment. So, we had nothing for our son. Earlier that day Vince and I took a drive to a baby store to get things we would need. We walked into the store, hand-in-hand, and met the first sales clerk. “We’re having a baby in an hour,” we said. “Give us everything we need!” I’m sure she saw dollar signs as she took us and our soon-to-be-filled cart through the store throwing in everything from rattles to diapers to bottles. I dropped Vince off at the house to wait for Fredi and the baby,

My Water Broke! The phone call had come on Friday morning, and the meeting with the social worker had been Friday afternoon when we found out that we were going to get a baby on Saturday. The baby arrived Saturday morning, and we prepared his bassinet and took care of him in the afternoon. The Gay Pride concert had been Saturday evening, when the baby’s arrival was announced to the community. Sunday morning I was in the Gay Pride parade with the Lesbian Gay Chorus of San Francisco. Over the previous year or so, I had been in regular contact with my friend Tom who had taken us to the meeting where we first applied for adoption through the county. Tom was a good friend, a fellow Oakland teacher, and had been interested in having children. I felt bad because the weekend had been so busy I had not had a chance to call Tom and tell him what happened. A big flatbed truck, which was our float in the parade, crept slowly up market street with its noisy generator amplifying our music.

God Is Gracious Many parents feel that their baby is special, a gift from God, and in a way they are. But our son was more special, really.  Ian came to us late in the morning on a Saturday, and I was scheduled to sing in the Gay Pride concert that evening. At the time, 1990, I was singing with the Lesbian Gay Chorus of San Francisco, with Pat Parr directing.  Before the concert started Pat asked me if he could make an announcement about the arrival of our son. Speaking to a crowd of nearly 2000 he told them that even in the midst of the destruction from AIDS and our struggle for civil rights that wonderful things were happening. He announced that we were the first couple to receive a baby from Alameda county, that very morning. The crowd erupted into cheers and applause. It wasn’t only congratulations for Vince and me. I could feel the momentary relief from grief, the optimism that such a move by a public agency gave our community, the sheer joy that new life was coming, and th

Paul             It was hard to tell who could make me laugh longer or harder, Paul or Jimmy. Jimmy had been one of my best friends since first grade. We had shared a similar interests in pet chickens and pigeons, and eventually men. Paul and I, although we were first cousins, were also best friends, seeking out each other at family gatherings. Paul’s family had a farm where I often stayed as a child. We did gardening, cared for animals, and took long walks exploring the woods and creeks nearby. It was no surprise that the three of us became friends as young men, haunting gay bars in Cincinnati and howling at each other’s jokes. Once, during their visit to my home in California, we were so busy laughing that we burned a wooden spatula resting across a skillet. The spatula is still in the drawer to the left of the stove.             Then Jimmy got sick with AIDS. After Kenny, Steven, Carter, and Christopher. Before Kevin, Jonathan, William, and Eric. And before Paul.   “It won’

That’s What I Asked For By the time our kids came along AIDS was moving like a tornado through our community. Sometimes people would get sick and die within a few weeks, and sometimes it would take a couple of years. More typically, we would hear of somebody getting sick and they would begin a slow decline in their physical health and their social connections, until they disappeared. Then there would be a funeral a few weeks later. It happened to Kenny, one of my best friends. And then Steven, one of my roommates. And Christopher, Andrew’s partner. And Kevin, James, Carter, John, Donald, and others. Death was constant. I don’t know how some people stood it. Sometimes they would suffer from something called Survivors Guilt , where they would have bad feelings about remaining behind after so many that we had known had died. I didn’t feel guilty, but sometimes I felt sadly lucky because I wasn’t sick and I was sad that so many had died. Vince and I were preoccupied with our chi

13 Burnt Spatula We were standing in my kitchen one summer evening. Paul and Jimmy had flown out from Cincinnati for a short visit. I remember it was dark, but we were just getting to the point of making dinner. We were having a stir-fried something , and I was using a wooden spatula. It’s a wonder we ever got anything done, really. The three of us would spend most of our time teasing each other, commenting on movie stars or singers or other gay idols, and making constant jokes about whatever we were doing that would keep us laughing and snorting until our cheeks hurt. As we were standing there chuckling, The house began to shake. Paul screamed. Jimmy stared at me, wide-eyed. And I began to howl with laughter even as I continue to stir. “It’s just an earthquake,” I told them. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.” I was trying to calm them. And just as I said that there was another jolt! We all three screamed and then held our sides as we laughed.  It wasn’t until I straighte