Kevin Dec. 12, 2023
I slept with him twice but we never had sex, that gay
younger brother of a kid I graduated grammar school with, who latched on to me
a few years later, the first time around
Christmas time when he cuddled against me in bed with the hope that I might get
interested enough to engage, and then a second time at my house in the spring
when he pressed the issue more and I when discovered that gay men desire me
even if I did not desire them back, he being my first experience -- if you
discount my perverted Uncle who tried to seduce me when he got drunk every
Christmas Eve and I resisted.
I think of Kevin now and then particularly around this time
of year when I wonder if he managed to survive those tough times later, the way many of my gay friends never did, such
as Max in Greenwich Village who use to try and talk me into coming to his room
on Broadway or that poor gay kid in LA who tried to balance being gay and being
Christian, a boy I eventually wrote a novel about although he most likely of
all of them was the least likely to still be alive.
I always wound up in odd positions, such as with the gay
Broadway choreographer who I did not know who was gay and who at a party in
Greenwich Village, talked me into giving him my phone number, telling me we
could work together, me being a writer
and I want to be a musician, only to have my laughing friends to tell me on the
way home that he was just looking for a fuck and he later when he called me I
had to somehow squirm out of that appointment we were planning to make.
There were others along the way the gay kid I saw in an LA
jail who was raped many times by macho men who hated his being gay but didn't
mind abusing him or worse the gay kid in the army hospital Ward, who in the
middle of the night, desperate for a warm body, slithered into the beds of
Vietnam veterans straight from the war, who eventually beat him up --and a forever lasting guilt -- I did nothing to stop.
I told this story to the two gay guys in a town I covered who
local firefighters abused, and who were later forced to move into Jersey City
to get away from them, and were pursued to the point of filing a lawsuit which
they won, but which shattered their relationship forever.
At some point in our lives, these moments stick out more
than other times, and because of Kevin, I think of all of the others in the long line
of survivors and non survivors, who I have met over the years and who were
attracted to me, even if I was not
attracted bac, k at least not the way they wanted, more kinship than
relationship, more like a big brother to those lost sheep I knew would struggle
to survive even if AIDS had not reared its ugly head.
I wonder often about Kevin, where he ended up, who he ended
up with, and whether he still thinks of me in the same way, whether he was
really looking for love not sex, and I could give him neither, just the way I
could not satisfy the needs of my uncle, who clearly only wanted sex and with
someone young and innocent, when I was neither, unable to seduce someone who
had already knew the game from being on the streets, and having seen others
like him these stalkers who made use of boys who were too innocent to know
better.
In the end my uncle found the boy he wanted, only to have
the boy and his sister use him, such as they did even to the day he died of a
stroke, even when I came to the hospital before his final demise and saw real
love and affection in his eyes as he faded away into limbo.
How do people live their lives like this? How do we define
love when in the end all we have are our desires, and our wishes, and the need
for some warm body pressed up against us just to make us feel less lonely,
which is what I think Kevin really was all about even though I think he would
have loved much, much more.
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