Yesterday was World AIDS Day.
This year is like any of the last 35 years since my Uncle Charlie died of AIDS. If my math is correct he would have been around 35 years old in the above photo. He was on the cusp of 38 when he died.
It’s a strange thing to realize that so many of the men I used to know as a boy, men who protected me, doted on me, made me feel seen have been gone for most of my life. I’ve told you the story of my Uncle Charlie before.
It’s funny the way things will pop into my brain. The other day I was talking with my wife and mother-in-law about things I miss about the United States now that we live in Paris and I mentioned Jif peanut butter. MIL asked, “what about people?” and I had a strange, immediate thought cross my mind: I’ve been missing people most of my life.
I have especially been missing my Uncle Charlie and his friends who helped mold me into the tolerant asshole that I am today. I say asshole because I am proud of being intolerant of the intolerable. I love my gay friends, my trans friends, my beautiful dichotomy of weirdos friends. And anyone that would treat them as less than is, well, a cunt that deserve derision and a boot in the ass. So… tolerant asshole.
You would have loved my Uncle Charlie. You would have been lucky to have had him as your uncle. Especially if you were an awkward straight boy with no skills.
Take drama, mijo…
Take home-ec, mijo…
Take choir, mijo…
Why, tio?
Because you’ll be surrounded by girls.
Always my wing man. Of course, he was right. And I unwittingly learned so much about tolerance, cleaning up after myself, and a love of the arts.
That’s the thing of it, right? He steered me into a world I might not have considered and along the way I learned to seek out the weirdos because it turned out he knew I was one too; where the world saw Zeppo, he knew I was a lot more of a Groucho. And maybe he knew that the gays and the girls that loved them would help me figure some things out for myself.
And I catch myself wondering what a gorgeous, older Uncle Charlie would have become. Wishing more than wondering. Remembering the time in Los Feliz when we were at the sidewalk café across from his apartment and the hot waitress swooned over him the way a lot of women did. Wishing I could bring him to Paris and watch the classy Parisiennes, young and old, swoon just to end up a little disappointed.
There really is no point to this post aside from the fact that I miss my Uncle.
Last night my friend Chris said something that has been rattling around in my head. He recently lost his mother to cancer and he was feeling a certain kind of way about her dying just as she was finally getting to the point where she could do all the things she’d been putting off. I am paraphrasing, so forgive me if I get it wrong, Chris, but he said something along the lines of, “I can’t keep waiting to go after those things I’m passionate about. If nothing else, I owe it to my mom to get after it and really live.”
It’s the kind of thing my Uncle Charlie would have smiled and nodded at in that, “he gets it” kind of way.
I have now outlived the two most important men in my life. My dad and his brother. The two men who poured themselves into me to mold me into something resembling a good man. They both deserved so much better from this life. If I am their legacy they deserve so much better from me. So I guess I better get after it.
Just promise me something, okay dear reader? When you read or hear that I have gotten to the end of my story, please try to remember that my story is not just mine. When you talk about me around the fire or at the bar or wherever just remember that all I have ever been is a reflection of the men that made me. If there has ever been something for you to love within me just know I am a reflection of those men.
