Surviving, thriving and celebrating
August has always been my favorite month. What I love most about this month is that, throughout the entire northern hemisphere, August is always August everywhere. No matter where one lives or wherever one travels this time of year, one always knows what to pack. August also just happens to be the month in which I met my husband, the love of my life. In fact, on Aug. 18, he and I will have been together for 30 years … Whoa!
Where did it go? How did we become AARP members? I don’t feel one bit different than when I was 25. How cruel a joke is that?
Even for Straightsville, 30 years together is an impressive milestone. In Gayville, it’s practically a miracle. Hell, that I’m even still ambulatory, considering the era I lived through, feels nothing short of preternatural, if not outright thaumaturgic!
None of the other fellow blonds I once knew — of my own age, gender and sexual persuasion — can still lay claim to mailing addresses. They disappeared in the first wave. To the very last, all the blonds died first: the dazzler kind, vivacious, fearless and flirty. Why, those of my ilk who lived to see the new century and its new miracle meds are now rarer than even unicorns.
Nary one of my other NYC buds made it. I’m the sole survivor. I couldn’t begin to surmise why.
Certainly my lifestyle practices did me no favors. After all, it wasn’t until 1982, the year I turned 20, that AIDS was even officially given a name. Barely was it even a blip on the CDC radar, and not until 1985, when I first moved from Alabama to New York City on the ludicrous pipe dream of becoming a successful writer did I even peel open my first condom wrapper. Maybe that’s what saved me? Shortly afterwards, all my gay friends back in Birmingham began biting the dust.
Still, safe sex was not exactly prioritized. At least not until October of ’85 when Rock Hudson died. Somehow, that was the game-changer. In Manhattan, overnight, all the gay bath houses suddenly chained their doors. Gay bars emptied, and, on Christopher Street one, could hear your voice echo.
But for my scarred generation, it was already too late. Every day, for what ultimately stretched into a hopeless 20 years, my tribesmen would wake up wondering if that slight tickle in the back of their throat or that little cough was the harbinger of the beginning of their end.
The final two decades of the 20th century were grim years indeed for those of us whom, through an unfortunate draw of youth’s sexual straw, happened to be attracted to our own same gender. Blindly, we wandered a minefield through the dark, wincing at screams of the luckless, wondering when our turn would come. I knew of no one who thought of AZT as anything more than exactly what it was — a killer placebo hoax.
What does one do without hope? Assume a miracle will happen. At least that was my personal playbill. And so that’s what happened. The miraculous appearance of protease inhibitors sliced through the darkness, at last. And arm-in-arm with my mate of equally blessed fortune, we strode out of the killing fields into the light, eyes blinkering, only to discover that when at last the sun shines again, it even shimmers.
Because, what do you know! Marriage equality — the impossible dream — suddenly turned reality. The wilderness years were over, wedding bells a-ringing!
And here we are back in mid-August. Rifling through a box of old papers the other day, I stumbled across a rather (in retrospect) cryptic email from my now long-deceased mother, dated Dec. 5, 2002. Mom always refracted a sort of benevolent witchiness about her — Endora mixed with Auntie Mame and a swirl of Aunt Clara — which I took totally for granted.
“Dear Howard, I do not know where you will be farming [I see some dark ages ahead] or on what scale, but the world will change before you are 80 and you will be able to afford ‘some good land and a lot of it,’ as Daddy always said. You can play lord of the manor in your dotage. Love, Mom”
Uhm, come again? I’ve still decades to go yet before 80, yet Mom sure hit bullseye already on all accounts.
Mom adored nothing more than meandering about the paths of her Alabama backyard flower garden at sunrise. She’d come back in, sparkling of morning dew, dandelion fluff and a stray spider or two in her hair, and a radiant aura would sometimes backlight her face — my cue to inquire, “Anybody special out in the garden this morning, Mom?”
“Well, son, I saw Mom again just now (my dead grandmother) out by the firecracker tree. Howard, she’s not solid anymore like she used to be. She’s startin’ to turn, I dunno, chiffon-like. She’ll probably fade away forever before too much longer now.”
Draping the hook of her cane over a drawer handle, she then coyly dropped her bombshell: “Oh, and I saw who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with, too.” My spine started tingling. “Really, Mom? And who would that be?” Tossing a pinch of salt over her left shoulder, she trilled, “You haven’t met him yet, but he’s coming. Soon, too. He’ll be wearing a navy blazer and a gold Harvard signet ring. Oh, and he’s Eskimo.” Dousing my sandwich with more Mrs. Butterworth’s, I conjectured, “And riding six white horses he’ll be a-comin’ ‘round the mountain when he comes?”
Later that sultry summer, back in New York City, I almost didn’t attend yet another Bright Young Things party. I seem to recollect this one being hosted by my friend Bret. They all sort of blended together 30 years back, and the very last thing I expected that mid-summer’s night was to fall in love at first sight. In NYC for just the evening, my man stayed another four — a former Harvard graduate, who hailed from northern Alaska. Always, August will be my favorite month.
— Howard Lewis Russell
Men, send your September queries in to: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com. He may even answer one or two.