Memories of Past Lives
Some psychics and religions believe that our souls never die, that when our earthly bodies give way, we are reborn and we come back into our new lives as another person. While at the time of this writing (and I have no plans for any changes at this time) I am very much alive, yet as I sit in my home and look around I see evidence of my past lives along with my partner’s past lives and then as we put it all together, I see my/our current life.
I am a memory keeper. Not just in my mind where memories can often get distorted over time, or erased out self preservation, or just because our memory bank can hold just so much information. So it is important for me to hold on to physical objects that were part of my past lives.
As I see it, my life is broken down into four main categories. There is my child hood, though not idyllic was filled with many warm memories, especially of my mother who succumbed to cancer when I was 23. Now that I am almost 49, my mother has been gone longer than she was with me and my cerebral memories of her fade with each passing year. There is my military life, brief as it was, but filled with such a cast of interesting characters and adventures, but those memories too fade with each passing year, and each “new life” I am given. Then there are the twenty years that I spent with Len, my partner who I stayed with for better for worse, for richer for poorer and sickness and in health. When Len died, part of me died also. With Len’s passing twenty years of memories were industrial cleansed by his family who could never deal with the fact that he was gay, and at Len’s funeral I was relegated to “Dear Friend” status. The memories and love I shared with Len will live on in my heart forever, but just like any other memories, my mental memory drive will be forced to erase emotional data to make room for new memories. Finally, there is my life with Mike, my partner/spouse and since our relationship is new, we are now making new memories for ourselves.
Like me, Mike has past lives also, there was his childhood in Roseto Pennsyvlvania, a small slate mining town in the foot hills of the Pocono Mountains, there were his years at Rider College in the late 60’s, his marriage to a woman, subsequent divorce, and then a 15 year relationship with another partner, other than myself.
When Mike and I first moved in together, he moved into “my” apartment. It was my first apartment that I got after Len died and there was nothing about that apartment that said that anyone that I lived there. After about five months of sharing a tiny one bedroom apartment with noisy neighbors, not to mention Mike’s daily commute of two hours each way to work, we decided to look for a bigger place together. We needed to get out of South Jersey for two reasons, one, it was just ridiculous for Mike to commute two hours each way to work, and two, south Jersey was filled with too many memories of Len and the longer I stayed in south Jersey, the longer I prolonged the already arduous process of grieving, so we picked a location that was halfway between Mike’s work and my work and this certified Bruce Springsteen loving Jersey Boy found himself in Lansdale Pennsylvana.
Mike and I now share a home that we built together, but we built with pieces from our past lives. Between my and Mike’s childhood memories, our subsequent college and armed forces days, our past relationships there are literally over a hundred years of memories in this apartment. Pictures of our parents and grand parents as children and as bride and grooms, pictures of our childhood, pictures of Mike’s kids, my pictures of Len.
When you look at our apartment, it looks like a warm inviting home, there is nothing (save for the tiny kitchen) that would make you feel like you are in an apartment. No, Mike and I are committed to make a home.
Sometimes I look around our home and something catches my eye, sometimes it is a piece of furniture, sometimes a gift that Mike got me for our first Christmas, sometimes a picture and I reminded of how many lives I have had. There is the vase the I bought Len during one our last vacations together, there is a gravy boat that belonged to my mother, there is a picture of my sister Ellenbeth when she was just 15. I look at Mike’s things also, the china that belonged to him and his wife, the china closet he bought with his last partner, pictures of his children when they were kids, long before I came into their lives and I am reminded of his past lives also.
So many people say that material possessions are not important, but they are. I am not talking about extravagant indulges like $500 shoes, or $2000 suits, or even fancy cars or fancy jewelry. My “wedding” band from Len cost $99, we bought on Jewelers Row in Phildadelphia, yet every time I look down at it, I am reminded of the love we shared. In October of this year Mike and I got married and I am wearing one more $99 wedding band, and it’s okay, I don’t need platinum to symbolize my love for a person, in this case titatanium steel is enough.
I guess what I am trying to say is you never know where your precious memories lie. Sometimes they are in a photo album, sometimes a record album and sometimes a simple Christmas tree ornament.
It’s Christmas, the time of giving, and if you are like me and so many other Americans you are on a tight budget. I’d love to be in the position to surprise Mike with a trip to Europe to ski, but that is not going to happen this year, instead I am having a family heirloom of his restored-his grand parents wedding. That is something that can and will stay in his family long after we are gone. I urge you all to give during this season to your loved ones, but forgo the fruitcake and the Ronco Ginzo knives, a simple framed picture of you and a loved one can be a treasured gift that will last a life time.
None of us know how many “lives” we have. I for one am counting on the everlasting afterlife promised in the new testament. I miss my mother, I miss my grand parents, I want to meet the maternal grand father who died before I was born. I miss Len and I miss a host of friends. All I know is that the life I have now I am going to enjoy. God bless you all and many you all have a Merry Christmas
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Slumming of America
The Slumming of America
The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."
The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."
The Slumming of America
The Slumming of America
The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."
The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."
Gay Marriage
Gay Marriage:
Currently there is a bill in front of New Jersey legislators that in my opinion does not have a chance of being signed into law. That bill is to legalize same sex marriage in New Jersey, just as they have in Connecticut, Massachusetts and of all places Iowa. I as a gay man who recently got married in the State of Connecticut feel it is my duty as a gay man and as an American to speak up.As it stands at the time of this writing, this bill must be voted on by the Senate, and then if approved, must move on and be passed by the Assembly. Given that the Assembly is not scheduled to go back into session until January, this bill, even if passed by the Senate and the Assembly has little if any chance of getting signed into law as Governor Elect Chris Christie has made it clear that he will not sign the bill into law.The issue of gay marriage seems to be a very hot topic in the United States these days and a recent Gallup poll found that 57% of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, yet according to a poll by CNN, 57% of Americans support civil unions. It seems to me that we Americans are hung up on a simple case of semantics. There is seems to be growing support among Americans for gays and lesbians to have equal rights, but for some reason, heterosexual people want to hold on to the term “marriage” for themselves. Given that up to 41% of heterosexual marriages end up in divorce, it’s not like you guys are doing such a bang up job at marriage yourselves. A lot of people reading this might think “what is the big deal, if a civil union grants you the same rights as a marriage, why not take the deal”? Well at the age of 48, I don’t want to play Let’s Make A Deal and I feel that I have the right to hear the words “I now pronounce you united in marriage” just like heterosexuals do.The anti gay marriage lobbyists have been running ads on television and the radio stating that gay marriage affects everyone, that if gay marriage laws are passed, our children will be forced to hear stories in school that is okay for a prince to marry a prince. This is nothing more than a fear tactic that was used back in the late 70’s by anti gay rights crusaders like Anita Bryant, who felt that if gay men and women were allowed to teach in public schools, we would poison their minds. I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, I don’t want to talk about my sex life to anyone other than my closest friends, let alone a class room filled with second graders. The truth is, in New Jersey, parents have the right to approve the curriculum being taught in school.If anyone were to argue that kids are growing up too fast today I would be the first to agree. I would never want the responsibility of raising a child in today’s society, but why is that Americans will allow their children to listen to Britney Spears, watch her videos (not to mention her off stage antics that are often caught by the paparazzi), but don’t want gays to have the right to say “I do” and hear the words “united in marriage”Of course there are always the right wing religious zealots who believe that all homosexuals are going to hell based on the book of Leviticus. Well if we are going to use the Old Testament as a reason to deny a group of people rights, well while I am not a biblical scholar, I do know there is a little clause in the Book of Leviticus that states that eating pork is a sin along with any shellfish, so do we now deny pork loving lobster eating Americans their rights? I know in my heart of hearts that nothing I, or anyone can say to the religious right that is going to change their mind. They have their right to believe what they want to believe, but I was under the impression that one of the keystones of America was the separation of Church and State.Then there is the group of Americans who believe that marriage is a “sacred union between a man and a woman”. Yet, this sacred union is made an absolute mockery of by heterosexuals all the time. Pick up the newspaper on any given day and you can read about the latest Hollywood couple to divorce. Do you realize that Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married nine times? Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor are tied at eight times and how about that Tiger Woods and his mistresses? In addition, Americans are willing to watch a television show like the Bachelor, where 12 bimbos vie for the affections of one man and after 12 weeks they are engaged? Yet someone like myself, who spent twenty years with a man, helped him to raise a child who suffered from fetal alcohol effects, dealt with his chronic illness (Len had Chrone’s disease and then a subsequent liver transplant) was not able to marry him? For the record, Len died on March 17, 2008, my 47th birthday, at work, in the high school where he was principal.Len’s death devastated me and it nearly killed me too. I came very close to dying of a broken heart, but fate intervened and God sent me someone who literally saved my life. Mike, or “Ronca” as I call him (Ronca is his last name) and I got married on October 16, 2009 in Connecticut. It was a very simple ceremony, just one of our friends was in attendance but I have to tell you how good it made me/us feel to fill out a marriage license application, get married, hear the words “I now pronounce you united in marriage”.When the service was over, the justice of the peace asked us if we felt any different. We both paused and almost simultaneously answered “yes, we feel more bonded, more connected, we feel like we have taken our relationship to the next level”. The Justice of the Peace then informed me that he asks everyone he marries that question, and that our answer was almost universal.While my marriage is not recognized by the federal government and the only benefit that Ronca and I will get from being married is that I can now put him on my health insurance at work, I feel more whole, I feel more connected, I feel “married”. To me, marriage has nothing to do with who you love, but how you love. Marriage is sticking it out when things get so tough that it would be so much easier to just throw in the towel and bolt, but you don’t, because you know you just could not live your life without that other person. Marriage is raising a child with fetal alcohol effects who is putting a strain on your relationship that most people, gay or straight could not endure, and sticking it out and doing the best you can because you just can’t bear the thought of living without that person.So while I have little if any hopes of seeing gay marriage passed in New Jersey, I can say that I am married, and nobody will ever take that away from me. Len, thanks for twenty of the best years of my life, and Ronca, here’s to making the next twenty just as good if not better.
Currently there is a bill in front of New Jersey legislators that in my opinion does not have a chance of being signed into law. That bill is to legalize same sex marriage in New Jersey, just as they have in Connecticut, Massachusetts and of all places Iowa. I as a gay man who recently got married in the State of Connecticut feel it is my duty as a gay man and as an American to speak up.As it stands at the time of this writing, this bill must be voted on by the Senate, and then if approved, must move on and be passed by the Assembly. Given that the Assembly is not scheduled to go back into session until January, this bill, even if passed by the Senate and the Assembly has little if any chance of getting signed into law as Governor Elect Chris Christie has made it clear that he will not sign the bill into law.The issue of gay marriage seems to be a very hot topic in the United States these days and a recent Gallup poll found that 57% of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, yet according to a poll by CNN, 57% of Americans support civil unions. It seems to me that we Americans are hung up on a simple case of semantics. There is seems to be growing support among Americans for gays and lesbians to have equal rights, but for some reason, heterosexual people want to hold on to the term “marriage” for themselves. Given that up to 41% of heterosexual marriages end up in divorce, it’s not like you guys are doing such a bang up job at marriage yourselves. A lot of people reading this might think “what is the big deal, if a civil union grants you the same rights as a marriage, why not take the deal”? Well at the age of 48, I don’t want to play Let’s Make A Deal and I feel that I have the right to hear the words “I now pronounce you united in marriage” just like heterosexuals do.The anti gay marriage lobbyists have been running ads on television and the radio stating that gay marriage affects everyone, that if gay marriage laws are passed, our children will be forced to hear stories in school that is okay for a prince to marry a prince. This is nothing more than a fear tactic that was used back in the late 70’s by anti gay rights crusaders like Anita Bryant, who felt that if gay men and women were allowed to teach in public schools, we would poison their minds. I can’t speak for everyone, but personally, I don’t want to talk about my sex life to anyone other than my closest friends, let alone a class room filled with second graders. The truth is, in New Jersey, parents have the right to approve the curriculum being taught in school.If anyone were to argue that kids are growing up too fast today I would be the first to agree. I would never want the responsibility of raising a child in today’s society, but why is that Americans will allow their children to listen to Britney Spears, watch her videos (not to mention her off stage antics that are often caught by the paparazzi), but don’t want gays to have the right to say “I do” and hear the words “united in marriage”Of course there are always the right wing religious zealots who believe that all homosexuals are going to hell based on the book of Leviticus. Well if we are going to use the Old Testament as a reason to deny a group of people rights, well while I am not a biblical scholar, I do know there is a little clause in the Book of Leviticus that states that eating pork is a sin along with any shellfish, so do we now deny pork loving lobster eating Americans their rights? I know in my heart of hearts that nothing I, or anyone can say to the religious right that is going to change their mind. They have their right to believe what they want to believe, but I was under the impression that one of the keystones of America was the separation of Church and State.Then there is the group of Americans who believe that marriage is a “sacred union between a man and a woman”. Yet, this sacred union is made an absolute mockery of by heterosexuals all the time. Pick up the newspaper on any given day and you can read about the latest Hollywood couple to divorce. Do you realize that Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married nine times? Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor are tied at eight times and how about that Tiger Woods and his mistresses? In addition, Americans are willing to watch a television show like the Bachelor, where 12 bimbos vie for the affections of one man and after 12 weeks they are engaged? Yet someone like myself, who spent twenty years with a man, helped him to raise a child who suffered from fetal alcohol effects, dealt with his chronic illness (Len had Chrone’s disease and then a subsequent liver transplant) was not able to marry him? For the record, Len died on March 17, 2008, my 47th birthday, at work, in the high school where he was principal.Len’s death devastated me and it nearly killed me too. I came very close to dying of a broken heart, but fate intervened and God sent me someone who literally saved my life. Mike, or “Ronca” as I call him (Ronca is his last name) and I got married on October 16, 2009 in Connecticut. It was a very simple ceremony, just one of our friends was in attendance but I have to tell you how good it made me/us feel to fill out a marriage license application, get married, hear the words “I now pronounce you united in marriage”.When the service was over, the justice of the peace asked us if we felt any different. We both paused and almost simultaneously answered “yes, we feel more bonded, more connected, we feel like we have taken our relationship to the next level”. The Justice of the Peace then informed me that he asks everyone he marries that question, and that our answer was almost universal.While my marriage is not recognized by the federal government and the only benefit that Ronca and I will get from being married is that I can now put him on my health insurance at work, I feel more whole, I feel more connected, I feel “married”. To me, marriage has nothing to do with who you love, but how you love. Marriage is sticking it out when things get so tough that it would be so much easier to just throw in the towel and bolt, but you don’t, because you know you just could not live your life without that other person. Marriage is raising a child with fetal alcohol effects who is putting a strain on your relationship that most people, gay or straight could not endure, and sticking it out and doing the best you can because you just can’t bear the thought of living without that person.So while I have little if any hopes of seeing gay marriage passed in New Jersey, I can say that I am married, and nobody will ever take that away from me. Len, thanks for twenty of the best years of my life, and Ronca, here’s to making the next twenty just as good if not better.
When did dress down Friday become dress like we are going to Home Depot Friday
When Did Dress Down Friday Become Dress Like We Are Going to Home Depot Friday Maybe it’s my obsession with Project Runway and shows like What Not to Wear, maybe now that my anti-depressants have kicked in I am dressing better for work, or maybe I am just getting old and turning into curmudgeon that I long to be, but when I look around me at the work place and other social gatherings I am growing more and more shocked by what I see. Igrew up in the 70’s where high fashion was considered a pair of Levi’s and Bruce Springsteen tee shirt. Then off to college we went and just as we graduated (well those of us who graduated when we should have and did not take the 17 year route like yours truly) entered the work force armed with our degrees and new books like Dress For Success, and GQ’s Guide to Looking Good. Soon the power tie was in and the Springteen shirt was out and as my friends and I climbed the corporate ladder of the 80’s, we dressed to impress. Even those of us without power jobs worked for companies that actually had a dress code and unless we were working the stock room or the docks, we were not permitted to wear jeans or tee shirts. I think it was somewhere in the 90’s when someone had the bright idea to make work less stressful and instituted dress down Fridays, or casual Fridays, and while I think it is fine to dress casual on Friday, that does not mean that I show up for work looking like I am ready to go to a Lynard Skynard concert. What I notice on an almost daily basis are people who for whatever reason just don’t seem to care what they are dressed like. It’s like we have become a society where we set the alarm to allow us to sleep until the last possible minute and then decide that it is okay to throw on a pair of jeans, sneakers and a casual shirt and show up for work. My question is when did we as a society stop taking pride in the way we looked? When did we decide it was okay to show up for work dressed like we were ready for a day of house chores instead of presenting ourselves to the business world. Until recently, I was just as guilty if not more so guilty than others. I did (and still do set the alarm until the last possible moment), I did come to work in jeans and tee shirts and sneakers and you know what? I felt horrible about myself, I felt embarrassed to sit in meetings where my colleagues had on a shirt and tie and was ashamed when I passed someone in the hall who took the time to put on a shirt and tie and I was dressed for the mall. Luckily, something hit me recently and I began dressing up for work. The first day I came to work in a shirt and a tie everyone told me how nice I looked, and by the end of two weeks people were telling how much better I looked and you know what? I feel more professional in a shirt and a tie than I do in jeans and a t-shirt with Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band on it. I have found that the more I care about my appearance, the more I care about my performance. You see, do to circumstances beyond my control I was caught up in a nearly two year depression that just consumed me and now that I am out of the depression, I am dressing better and feeling better about myself. Some readers might think (as I often thought) “they don’t pay me enough to dress up” ya know what? Yes they do!!!!!!! Now I not talking about high fashion or suggesting we should all turn into Carrie Bradshaw’s and spend our entire paycheck on clothes, but these days there are just too many bargain stores where you can shop and buy business attire for the same price or in some cases less money than you would spend on a pair of jeans. Has anyone priced a pair of jeans lately? They are running in at close to and in many cases OVER $100, and don’t even get me started on the cost of a concert tee shirt-for what I have spent on Bruce Springsteen tee shirts alone during his last three tours I could have bought a week’ worth of wardrobe. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t ever want to be the guy who spends his Saturday in a pair of khakis and a starched shirt and as long as Bruce is playing I will wear him proudly, but there is a time and a place for everything, and work is not the place to advertise your favorite band, that is unless your work in a CD store
Monday, December 7, 2009
life as a gay widower
Life as a middle age gay widower
When my partner of twenty years died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 17 of 2008 (my 47th birthday) I was faced with the same emotions that countless other widows and widowers have felt since time began. First there was disbelief, then of course an overwhelming sense of numbness that cannot be put into words, then of course fear. How would I live without Len? What about the house we shared? Could I afford the mortgage on my own? Where would I live? Would I ever learn how to cook?
Len and I had been together for twenty years and like any other couple we had more than our fair share of ups and downs. I have always maintained that if anyone ever sat down and listened to his side of the story they would have said “you should leave Chalie (a nick name only he called me, and one, that it breaks my heart to accept, that I will never hear again), and if you ever heard my side of the story, you would have told me I should have left Len years ago. But Len and I had one of those relationships, and all of us, gay or straight, have witnessed, that defied all logic and we just could not live without one another. We needed each other like oxygen in order to survive, and on March 17 my oxygen supply got cut off.
Len was considerably older than me. He was 19 years my senior and as long as I knew him he had a host of medical problems. He battled Chrone’s disease (an auto immune disorder that affects the colon and lower intestine) and in 2001 he had to have a liver transplant as a result of having contracted Hepatitis B during a blood transfusion in the early 80’s before it was mandatory to screen blood donors.
Even though Len was older than me and had many medical issues, I just always assumed that he would live well into his 70’s. I would tease him all the time and tell him that he had come back from the dead more times than Freddy Krueger, so when I got a phone call from Len’s brother in law that “Leonard is gone” I was in shock.
Len was an assistant principal in a high school in Cherry Hill New Jersey and was loved by students, parents and faculty. He was somewhat of a legend in Cherry Hill and we could not go anywhere in the town, state, country or world without him running into someone he knew. Once on a plane to London he ran into an ex student and once while working out in a gym in West Hollywood I heard the familiar words “oh my God, that guy over there was my principal in high school”.
Len’s death made all of the local papers and even made the local evening news. The news stories mentioned how well he was loved by the community and that he was divorced and had three children, all of the information normally mentioned when someone of local prominence passes away. The news stories left out one major detail of Len’s life, and that would be me. Charles Middleton, or Chuck as I am known to most of my friends, or Chalie as I was known to Len.
Not being mentioned in any of the news reports was not that big of shock to me because at the time I was already in such a state of shock that it did not seem to matter. What I did not know was our relationship not being mentioned and me being left out of any news reports was just the beginning. It got worse, far worse than I could ever have imagined.
News of Len’s death spread quickly and soon the telephone began to ring off the hook. I am blessed with a large group of friends and family whom I can depend on in a crisis and by noon of that morning our house was filled with my friends, all doing what ever they could to comfort me. I survived on diet coke and cigarettes, the only two things that seemed to give me comfort.
By mid afternoon his three sons had arrived at our house and the first thing they wanted to see was the will. They had already called our lawyer and asked for a copy of it, but I always knew that when Len died things between me and his family would get ugly. It seems that death brings out the worst in people and when money is involved, things get uglier than you could ever imagine.
I was reassured by his three son’s that I would be part of funeral decisions and I did go to the funeral home with them and gave my input. When it came time to discuss Len’s obituary, I asked that I be listed as his surviving life partner, something that both Len and I had discussed before hand that we both wanted. The funeral director, his sons and his sister did not seem to have any problem with that and I put it out of my mind.
Later that night the family met at Len’s sister’s house so that we could go through pictures of Len’s life for picture slide show at the funeral. We all picked out pictures we liked and there was one of Len and I taken from the back holding hands on the beach that I wanted to be included, but his oldest son thought that that picture “would be putting our relationship in peoples faces and people already knew”. I was stunned, but again, I was still in such a state of shock and was just so numb, I did not know what to say. I had no idea that Len’s sons and sister were so ashamed of the fact that Len was gay that they were going to do everything they could to “sanitize” that aspect of Len’s life when it came to the funeral and the obituary.
Before I left Len’s sister’s house, his oldest son took me aside and told me he got a phone call from the funeral director and was told that since Len was being given a Catholic mass burial, they (meaning the funeral home) were afraid to use the words “Life partner” in the obituary and instead I was to be named as “dear friend”.
I spent twenty years of my life with this man. I had helped nurse him back to health after numerous operations, spent many a night in the emergency room with him as he spiked temperatures as a result of complications of his liver transplant, helped him raise his youngest son and in the course of just one day I had been bumped down in Len’s life to “dear friend”.
The next day his middle son drove me to the funeral home so I could view Len’s body. There he was, my “Lennny” or “Ert” as I would affectionately call him, lying in a casket in a suit that while he was alive we would joke as his “funeral suit”. He looked as handsome as ever. Of all the men I have ever dated, Len was hands down the most handsome man I have ever known. He was tall (6’4”) dark (Italian) and handsome. He resembled an Italian version of Sean Connery with beautiful white hair and a goatee. He never took a bad picture in his life.
I went to the casket and kissed Len and prayed and talked to him. Then I looked at the television monitor that was set up and was showing the slide show of his life and I stared in utter and complete disbelief and thought to myself “oh my God, they didn’t really do this to me, to us, to Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, what ever you want to call us. Out of 116 pictures, there were 9 pictures of me included in the slide show. Basically my life with Len was allotted one picture for every two years we were together. While I did realize, and to this day continue to realize, that Len had a life and a family before he met me, and that his sons wanted to remember their father as a family man, I was a huge part of Len’s life. Shortly before Len died, we had reached a stage in our relationship where things could have gone one way or another. Like many “married” couples, we had once again got to the point where you reassess the relationship and decide whether you want to continue or break up. We decided to stay together and after a tearful afternoon filled with confessions and apologies on both our parts Len hugged me and said “Ya know Chal, when all is said and done, you are still the best thing that ever happened to me”. How sad that the person that Len thought of as the best thing that ever happened to him was given just 9 pictures in a slide show that consisted of over a hundred (most of those pictures used had been taken by me).
Len’s funeral was huge. It was held at the largest church in Cherry Hill in anticipation of the crowds that were expected. The night of the viewing there were over 900 guests and the next day at the funeral, the entire church was filled. This may sound selfish of me, but I was mortified when my friends came to pay their respects and watched the slide show because it was so obvious that my image was missing. Anyone looking at the slide show would look at pictures of me and think that I was just one more friend. There was not one picture that would distinguish us as a couple of twenty years. I looked like one of his buddies. Just some guy.
For the funeral procession, every Cherry Hill Policeman on duty that day was assigned to direct traffic. As I state earlier, I always knew that when Len died things with his family were going to be difficult. They resented me from day one because until I came along, neither his sons nor his sister had any inclination that Len was gay. So along I came and soon became the family scapegoat. I did however expect that his family would show some degree of human decency and wait a week or so before everything hit the fan. Wrong I was because as I was driving his youngest son to the reception that followed the funeral, I was informed that the two older brothers wanted to “screw me”. I assured Matthew that legally there was nothing his brothers could do to me and that I was safe, but the emotional wound of that statement sent me further into shock. I got to the reception and there were his two oldest sons, smiling in my face all the while hoping to, as the youngest said, “screw me”.
At this point I would like to point out that I can be accused of a lot of things, one of them however is not marrying for money. Len was divorced and had to raise three sons on his own with no help from his ex-wife. The house we shared was mortgaged three times over and at the time of his death, he had about nine thousand dollars in the bank. There was nothing to screw me out of.
The day after Len’s funeral his two oldest sons stopped over with their wives along with Len’s sister. It is almost a cliché with gay couples when death occurs that the family comes in and starts taking things that belonged to the departed and the remaining partner has little if any rights to stop them. His one daughter in law started to pack up the china that Len bought when he was married. The very same china that Len and I served countless meals to our friends on. They took pictures, they took personal effects, they basically took anything they wanted and while I did have the legal recourse to stop them as stipulated in the will, I chose not to. I realized that while I lost a partner, his sons lost their father and his sister lost her brother. There were things in that house that as Len’s son belonged to them and I would have never stopped them, but did they have to do it the day after the funeral.
They left with their booty and I sat alone in the house that I shared with Len for twenty years. Pictures that had been hanging in our hallway for years were now gone, china that sat in our china closet for years gone. The next day the family came over and asked me what my plans were, what I thought I wanted to do about the house, etc. From the moment I walked in the door after I found out that Len died I instinctively knew that I could not stay in our home. Even though I could have afforded to, I chose to move. There were too many memories there and I knew if I was going to go on with my life I had to get out of that house. I also knew I had to do everything I could to further protect myself from Len’s family so it was decided that we would put the house on the market.
For those of you who have, or are trying to sell a house, the rule of thumb that realtors tell you is that less is more. Clear the house of any clutter. Take down all personal pictures. Try to make the house to look as move in ready as possible. So not two days after we buried Len, down came what was remaining of the pictures of Len and I. While I was at work one day the family came in and moved furniture, took down more pictures, took a blue willow plate off the mantle (a plate that I had given Len for Christmas one year and that had a great deal of sentimental value to me) and tried to hang the plate up on the wall. I came home to find that the plate had fallen off the wall and the plate was smashed.
What transpired over the next few weeks would take up more column space than allowed. I did however get a phone call from my lawyer who told me that he had just got off the phone with Len’s oldest son and that they were threatening to get their own lawyer, they did not want me to have anything. I knew this was coming. I also knew that as far as Len’s estate was concerned there would be nothing left over. I knew that even if the house did sell there would not be any profit to cover Len’s debts. I knew that I was entitled to a portion of Len’s life insurance and that it would be in my best interest to just take the money and find a place of my own. During a meeting with a realtor and Len’s brother in law and a contractor, which turned into a screaming match between the brother and law and the realtor, my lawyer pulled me aside and told me “get out as quickly as you can”.
So that I did. The insurance money came in and I found a one bedroom apartment. I learned how to cook for myself, I learned how to shop for groceries for myself and I learned how to pay bills and budget my money. Not once has Len’s son’s or sister ever called to see if I was okay or if I needed anything. Oh, I have gotten phone calls from them. Phone calls when they needed something, a favor, or information, but not once have any of them called me just to see how I was doing.
Some people reading this might ask why I am writing this article. Am I trying to tell the world how badly my partner’s family treated me? Am I am pleading my case for gay marriage? The reason I am writing this is because Len’s family erased all traces of Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, Lenny and Chalie, what ever name we chose to go by. I am writing this because I am angry that I was not given the right to mourn the way the rest of the family was. I am angry that I was treated like Len’s dirty little secret and my relationship with him of twenty years was brushed under the carpet. I am angry that Len and Chuck only exist in my heart right now.
It has been over 21 months since Len died and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The worst part though are the dreams I have about him. Every week, at least three times a week I dream about Len and they are never pleasant comforting dreams. I would not wish these dreams on my worst enemy.
I have gotten on with my life. I found someone else to share my life with, someone who understands that there was someone before him whom I still miss dearly. I can watch television again. I can get up in the morning and not want to just crawl back into bed, yet no matter what I do or ever will do there will always be a part of my soul missing. Len was one of those people who was bigger than life. He filled up a room with his presence. I miss his sense of humor, I miss our shared sense of humor, I miss our secret language that we shared and I miss him.
I send e-mails to Len’s old E-mail address about once a week, and until his cell phone was disconnected, I would call just to hear his voice. People ask me what I want. Well what I want is not possible. I want Len alive and healthy. But what I will settle for is for someone to read this article and know that once upon a time, there lived two men, Chuck and Len, and we loved each other very much. We defined marriage. Not just gay marriage, but marriage in general. We loved each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer.
Life is filled with lessons. Some of them are fun, some of them are hard. Some lessons you learn the easy way, others the hard way. If I learned anything about my experience with Len’s death is that resentment is a killer. Resentment just eats at a person’s soul until it becomes an obsession. I held (and sometimes still hold a great deal of resentment against Len’s family). So often I have thought about writing a letter telling them exactly what I thought of them. So often I drove home having an imaginary conversation in my head about how I was going to tell Len’s family off. The resentment I felt consumed me and by the grace of God, and the powers of Facebook, an old friend from high school came back into my life. This friend of mine has been through worse than me. She lost a son when he was only four years old. Through my friendship with her I learned how to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and every time I would start that internal dialogue in my head I would replace it with “I wish them well”.
I have a good life now. I live in Lansdale a community I love. I recently got married in Connecticut and I no longer carry around that anger and hatred in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready, willing or able to sit down with Len’s family and have dinner and I don’t ever want to see them again, but my thoughts are not consumed with hatred and revenge. I wish them well.
Len, I love you, you are the love of my life and I remain forever, your Chalie.
Charles “Chalie” Middleton
When my partner of twenty years died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 17 of 2008 (my 47th birthday) I was faced with the same emotions that countless other widows and widowers have felt since time began. First there was disbelief, then of course an overwhelming sense of numbness that cannot be put into words, then of course fear. How would I live without Len? What about the house we shared? Could I afford the mortgage on my own? Where would I live? Would I ever learn how to cook?
Len and I had been together for twenty years and like any other couple we had more than our fair share of ups and downs. I have always maintained that if anyone ever sat down and listened to his side of the story they would have said “you should leave Chalie (a nick name only he called me, and one, that it breaks my heart to accept, that I will never hear again), and if you ever heard my side of the story, you would have told me I should have left Len years ago. But Len and I had one of those relationships, and all of us, gay or straight, have witnessed, that defied all logic and we just could not live without one another. We needed each other like oxygen in order to survive, and on March 17 my oxygen supply got cut off.
Len was considerably older than me. He was 19 years my senior and as long as I knew him he had a host of medical problems. He battled Chrone’s disease (an auto immune disorder that affects the colon and lower intestine) and in 2001 he had to have a liver transplant as a result of having contracted Hepatitis B during a blood transfusion in the early 80’s before it was mandatory to screen blood donors.
Even though Len was older than me and had many medical issues, I just always assumed that he would live well into his 70’s. I would tease him all the time and tell him that he had come back from the dead more times than Freddy Krueger, so when I got a phone call from Len’s brother in law that “Leonard is gone” I was in shock.
Len was an assistant principal in a high school in Cherry Hill New Jersey and was loved by students, parents and faculty. He was somewhat of a legend in Cherry Hill and we could not go anywhere in the town, state, country or world without him running into someone he knew. Once on a plane to London he ran into an ex student and once while working out in a gym in West Hollywood I heard the familiar words “oh my God, that guy over there was my principal in high school”.
Len’s death made all of the local papers and even made the local evening news. The news stories mentioned how well he was loved by the community and that he was divorced and had three children, all of the information normally mentioned when someone of local prominence passes away. The news stories left out one major detail of Len’s life, and that would be me. Charles Middleton, or Chuck as I am known to most of my friends, or Chalie as I was known to Len.
Not being mentioned in any of the news reports was not that big of shock to me because at the time I was already in such a state of shock that it did not seem to matter. What I did not know was our relationship not being mentioned and me being left out of any news reports was just the beginning. It got worse, far worse than I could ever have imagined.
News of Len’s death spread quickly and soon the telephone began to ring off the hook. I am blessed with a large group of friends and family whom I can depend on in a crisis and by noon of that morning our house was filled with my friends, all doing what ever they could to comfort me. I survived on diet coke and cigarettes, the only two things that seemed to give me comfort.
By mid afternoon his three sons had arrived at our house and the first thing they wanted to see was the will. They had already called our lawyer and asked for a copy of it, but I always knew that when Len died things between me and his family would get ugly. It seems that death brings out the worst in people and when money is involved, things get uglier than you could ever imagine.
I was reassured by his three son’s that I would be part of funeral decisions and I did go to the funeral home with them and gave my input. When it came time to discuss Len’s obituary, I asked that I be listed as his surviving life partner, something that both Len and I had discussed before hand that we both wanted. The funeral director, his sons and his sister did not seem to have any problem with that and I put it out of my mind.
Later that night the family met at Len’s sister’s house so that we could go through pictures of Len’s life for picture slide show at the funeral. We all picked out pictures we liked and there was one of Len and I taken from the back holding hands on the beach that I wanted to be included, but his oldest son thought that that picture “would be putting our relationship in peoples faces and people already knew”. I was stunned, but again, I was still in such a state of shock and was just so numb, I did not know what to say. I had no idea that Len’s sons and sister were so ashamed of the fact that Len was gay that they were going to do everything they could to “sanitize” that aspect of Len’s life when it came to the funeral and the obituary.
Before I left Len’s sister’s house, his oldest son took me aside and told me he got a phone call from the funeral director and was told that since Len was being given a Catholic mass burial, they (meaning the funeral home) were afraid to use the words “Life partner” in the obituary and instead I was to be named as “dear friend”.
I spent twenty years of my life with this man. I had helped nurse him back to health after numerous operations, spent many a night in the emergency room with him as he spiked temperatures as a result of complications of his liver transplant, helped him raise his youngest son and in the course of just one day I had been bumped down in Len’s life to “dear friend”.
The next day his middle son drove me to the funeral home so I could view Len’s body. There he was, my “Lennny” or “Ert” as I would affectionately call him, lying in a casket in a suit that while he was alive we would joke as his “funeral suit”. He looked as handsome as ever. Of all the men I have ever dated, Len was hands down the most handsome man I have ever known. He was tall (6’4”) dark (Italian) and handsome. He resembled an Italian version of Sean Connery with beautiful white hair and a goatee. He never took a bad picture in his life.
I went to the casket and kissed Len and prayed and talked to him. Then I looked at the television monitor that was set up and was showing the slide show of his life and I stared in utter and complete disbelief and thought to myself “oh my God, they didn’t really do this to me, to us, to Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, what ever you want to call us. Out of 116 pictures, there were 9 pictures of me included in the slide show. Basically my life with Len was allotted one picture for every two years we were together. While I did realize, and to this day continue to realize, that Len had a life and a family before he met me, and that his sons wanted to remember their father as a family man, I was a huge part of Len’s life. Shortly before Len died, we had reached a stage in our relationship where things could have gone one way or another. Like many “married” couples, we had once again got to the point where you reassess the relationship and decide whether you want to continue or break up. We decided to stay together and after a tearful afternoon filled with confessions and apologies on both our parts Len hugged me and said “Ya know Chal, when all is said and done, you are still the best thing that ever happened to me”. How sad that the person that Len thought of as the best thing that ever happened to him was given just 9 pictures in a slide show that consisted of over a hundred (most of those pictures used had been taken by me).
Len’s funeral was huge. It was held at the largest church in Cherry Hill in anticipation of the crowds that were expected. The night of the viewing there were over 900 guests and the next day at the funeral, the entire church was filled. This may sound selfish of me, but I was mortified when my friends came to pay their respects and watched the slide show because it was so obvious that my image was missing. Anyone looking at the slide show would look at pictures of me and think that I was just one more friend. There was not one picture that would distinguish us as a couple of twenty years. I looked like one of his buddies. Just some guy.
For the funeral procession, every Cherry Hill Policeman on duty that day was assigned to direct traffic. As I state earlier, I always knew that when Len died things with his family were going to be difficult. They resented me from day one because until I came along, neither his sons nor his sister had any inclination that Len was gay. So along I came and soon became the family scapegoat. I did however expect that his family would show some degree of human decency and wait a week or so before everything hit the fan. Wrong I was because as I was driving his youngest son to the reception that followed the funeral, I was informed that the two older brothers wanted to “screw me”. I assured Matthew that legally there was nothing his brothers could do to me and that I was safe, but the emotional wound of that statement sent me further into shock. I got to the reception and there were his two oldest sons, smiling in my face all the while hoping to, as the youngest said, “screw me”.
At this point I would like to point out that I can be accused of a lot of things, one of them however is not marrying for money. Len was divorced and had to raise three sons on his own with no help from his ex-wife. The house we shared was mortgaged three times over and at the time of his death, he had about nine thousand dollars in the bank. There was nothing to screw me out of.
The day after Len’s funeral his two oldest sons stopped over with their wives along with Len’s sister. It is almost a cliché with gay couples when death occurs that the family comes in and starts taking things that belonged to the departed and the remaining partner has little if any rights to stop them. His one daughter in law started to pack up the china that Len bought when he was married. The very same china that Len and I served countless meals to our friends on. They took pictures, they took personal effects, they basically took anything they wanted and while I did have the legal recourse to stop them as stipulated in the will, I chose not to. I realized that while I lost a partner, his sons lost their father and his sister lost her brother. There were things in that house that as Len’s son belonged to them and I would have never stopped them, but did they have to do it the day after the funeral.
They left with their booty and I sat alone in the house that I shared with Len for twenty years. Pictures that had been hanging in our hallway for years were now gone, china that sat in our china closet for years gone. The next day the family came over and asked me what my plans were, what I thought I wanted to do about the house, etc. From the moment I walked in the door after I found out that Len died I instinctively knew that I could not stay in our home. Even though I could have afforded to, I chose to move. There were too many memories there and I knew if I was going to go on with my life I had to get out of that house. I also knew I had to do everything I could to further protect myself from Len’s family so it was decided that we would put the house on the market.
For those of you who have, or are trying to sell a house, the rule of thumb that realtors tell you is that less is more. Clear the house of any clutter. Take down all personal pictures. Try to make the house to look as move in ready as possible. So not two days after we buried Len, down came what was remaining of the pictures of Len and I. While I was at work one day the family came in and moved furniture, took down more pictures, took a blue willow plate off the mantle (a plate that I had given Len for Christmas one year and that had a great deal of sentimental value to me) and tried to hang the plate up on the wall. I came home to find that the plate had fallen off the wall and the plate was smashed.
What transpired over the next few weeks would take up more column space than allowed. I did however get a phone call from my lawyer who told me that he had just got off the phone with Len’s oldest son and that they were threatening to get their own lawyer, they did not want me to have anything. I knew this was coming. I also knew that as far as Len’s estate was concerned there would be nothing left over. I knew that even if the house did sell there would not be any profit to cover Len’s debts. I knew that I was entitled to a portion of Len’s life insurance and that it would be in my best interest to just take the money and find a place of my own. During a meeting with a realtor and Len’s brother in law and a contractor, which turned into a screaming match between the brother and law and the realtor, my lawyer pulled me aside and told me “get out as quickly as you can”.
So that I did. The insurance money came in and I found a one bedroom apartment. I learned how to cook for myself, I learned how to shop for groceries for myself and I learned how to pay bills and budget my money. Not once has Len’s son’s or sister ever called to see if I was okay or if I needed anything. Oh, I have gotten phone calls from them. Phone calls when they needed something, a favor, or information, but not once have any of them called me just to see how I was doing.
Some people reading this might ask why I am writing this article. Am I trying to tell the world how badly my partner’s family treated me? Am I am pleading my case for gay marriage? The reason I am writing this is because Len’s family erased all traces of Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, Lenny and Chalie, what ever name we chose to go by. I am writing this because I am angry that I was not given the right to mourn the way the rest of the family was. I am angry that I was treated like Len’s dirty little secret and my relationship with him of twenty years was brushed under the carpet. I am angry that Len and Chuck only exist in my heart right now.
It has been over 21 months since Len died and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The worst part though are the dreams I have about him. Every week, at least three times a week I dream about Len and they are never pleasant comforting dreams. I would not wish these dreams on my worst enemy.
I have gotten on with my life. I found someone else to share my life with, someone who understands that there was someone before him whom I still miss dearly. I can watch television again. I can get up in the morning and not want to just crawl back into bed, yet no matter what I do or ever will do there will always be a part of my soul missing. Len was one of those people who was bigger than life. He filled up a room with his presence. I miss his sense of humor, I miss our shared sense of humor, I miss our secret language that we shared and I miss him.
I send e-mails to Len’s old E-mail address about once a week, and until his cell phone was disconnected, I would call just to hear his voice. People ask me what I want. Well what I want is not possible. I want Len alive and healthy. But what I will settle for is for someone to read this article and know that once upon a time, there lived two men, Chuck and Len, and we loved each other very much. We defined marriage. Not just gay marriage, but marriage in general. We loved each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer.
Life is filled with lessons. Some of them are fun, some of them are hard. Some lessons you learn the easy way, others the hard way. If I learned anything about my experience with Len’s death is that resentment is a killer. Resentment just eats at a person’s soul until it becomes an obsession. I held (and sometimes still hold a great deal of resentment against Len’s family). So often I have thought about writing a letter telling them exactly what I thought of them. So often I drove home having an imaginary conversation in my head about how I was going to tell Len’s family off. The resentment I felt consumed me and by the grace of God, and the powers of Facebook, an old friend from high school came back into my life. This friend of mine has been through worse than me. She lost a son when he was only four years old. Through my friendship with her I learned how to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and every time I would start that internal dialogue in my head I would replace it with “I wish them well”.
I have a good life now. I live in Lansdale a community I love. I recently got married in Connecticut and I no longer carry around that anger and hatred in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready, willing or able to sit down with Len’s family and have dinner and I don’t ever want to see them again, but my thoughts are not consumed with hatred and revenge. I wish them well.
Len, I love you, you are the love of my life and I remain forever, your Chalie.
Charles “Chalie” Middleton
Life as a middle aged gay widower
Life as a middle age gay widower
When my partner of twenty years died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 17 of 2008 (my 47th birthday) I was faced with the same emotions that countless other widows and widowers have felt since time began. First there was disbelief, then of course an overwhelming sense of numbness that cannot be put into words, then of course fear. How would I live without Len? What about the house we shared? Could I afford the mortgage on my own? Where would I live? Would I ever learn how to cook?
Len and I had been together for twenty years and like any other couple we had more than our fair share of ups and downs. I have always maintained that if anyone ever sat down and listened to his side of the story they would have said “you should leave Chalie (a nick name only he called me, and one, that it breaks my heart to accept, that I will never hear again), and if you ever heard my side of the story, you would have told me I should have left Len years ago. But Len and I had one of those relationships, and all of us, gay or straight, have witnessed, that defied all logic and we just could not live without one another. We needed each other like oxygen in order to survive, and on March 17 my oxygen supply got cut off.
Len was considerably older than me. He was 19 years my senior and as long as I knew him he had a host of medical problems. He battled Chrone’s disease (an auto immune disorder that affects the colon and lower intestine) and in 2001 he had to have a liver transplant as a result of having contracted Hepatitis B during a blood transfusion in the early 80’s before it was mandatory to screen blood donors.
Even though Len was older than me and had many medical issues, I just always assumed that he would live well into his 70’s. I would tease him all the time and tell him that he had come back from the dead more times than Freddy Krueger, so when I got a phone call from Len’s brother in law that “Leonard is gone” I was in shock.
Len was an assistant principal in a high school in Cherry Hill New Jersey and was loved by students, parents and faculty. He was somewhat of a legend in Cherry Hill and we could not go anywhere in the town, state, country or world without him running into someone he knew. Once on a plane to London he ran into an ex student and once while working out in a gym in West Hollywood I heard the familiar words “oh my God, that guy over there was my principal in high school”.
Len’s death made all of the local papers and even made the local evening news. The news stories mentioned how well he was loved by the community and that he was divorced and had three children, all of the information normally mentioned when someone of local prominence passes away. The news stories left out one major detail of Len’s life, and that would be me. Charles Middleton, or Chuck as I am known to most of my friends, or Chalie as I was known to Len.
Not being mentioned in any of the news reports was not that big of shock to me because at the time I was already in such a state of shock that it did not seem to matter. What I did not know was our relationship not being mentioned and me being left out of any news reports was just the beginning. It got worse, far worse than I could ever have imagined.
News of Len’s death spread quickly and soon the telephone began to ring off the hook. I am blessed with a large group of friends and family whom I can depend on in a crisis and by noon of that morning our house was filled with my friends, all doing what ever they could to comfort me. I survived on diet coke and cigarettes, the only two things that seemed to give me comfort.
By mid afternoon his three sons had arrived at our house and the first thing they wanted to see was the will. They had already called our lawyer and asked for a copy of it, but I always knew that when Len died things between me and his family would get ugly. It seems that death brings out the worst in people and when money is involved, things get uglier than you could ever imagine.
I was reassured by his three son’s that I would be part of funeral decisions and I did go to the funeral home with them and gave my input. When it came time to discuss Len’s obituary, I asked that I be listed as his surviving life partner, something that both Len and I had discussed before hand that we both wanted. The funeral director, his sons and his sister did not seem to have any problem with that and I put it out of my mind.
Later that night the family met at Len’s sister’s house so that we could go through pictures of Len’s life for picture slide show at the funeral. We all picked out pictures we liked and there was one of Len and I taken from the back holding hands on the beach that I wanted to be included, but his oldest son thought that that picture “would be putting our relationship in peoples faces and people already knew”. I was stunned, but again, I was still in such a state of shock and was just so numb, I did not know what to say. I had no idea that Len’s sons and sister were so ashamed of the fact that Len was gay that they were going to do everything they could to “sanitize” that aspect of Len’s life when it came to the funeral and the obituary.
Before I left Len’s sister’s house, his oldest son took me aside and told me he got a phone call from the funeral director and was told that since Len was being given a Catholic mass burial, they (meaning the funeral home) were afraid to use the words “Life partner” in the obituary and instead I was to be named as “dear friend”.
I spent twenty years of my life with this man. I had helped nurse him back to health after numerous operations, spent many a night in the emergency room with him as he spiked temperatures as a result of complications of his liver transplant, helped him raise his youngest son and in the course of just one day I had been bumped down in Len’s life to “dear friend”.
The next day his middle son drove me to the funeral home so I could view Len’s body. There he was, my “Lennny” or “Ert” as I would affectionately call him, lying in a casket in a suit that while he was alive we would joke as his “funeral suit”. He looked as handsome as ever. Of all the men I have ever dated, Len was hands down the most handsome man I have ever known. He was tall (6’4”) dark (Italian) and handsome. He resembled an Italian version of Sean Connery with beautiful white hair and a goatee. He never took a bad picture in his life.
I went to the casket and kissed Len and prayed and talked to him. Then I looked at the television monitor that was set up and was showing the slide show of his life and I stared in utter and complete disbelief and thought to myself “oh my God, they didn’t really do this to me, to us, to Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, what ever you want to call us. Out of 116 pictures, there were 9 pictures of me included in the slide show. Basically my life with Len was allotted one picture for every two years we were together. While I did realize, and to this day continue to realize, that Len had a life and a family before he met me, and that his sons wanted to remember their father as a family man, I was a huge part of Len’s life. Shortly before Len died, we had reached a stage in our relationship where things could have gone one way or another. Like many “married” couples, we had once again got to the point where you reassess the relationship and decide whether you want to continue or break up. We decided to stay together and after a tearful afternoon filled with confessions and apologies on both our parts Len hugged me and said “Ya know Chal, when all is said and done, you are still the best thing that ever happened to me”. How sad that the person that Len thought of as the best thing that ever happened to him was given just 9 pictures in a slide show that consisted of over a hundred (most of those pictures used had been taken by me).
Len’s funeral was huge. It was held at the largest church in Cherry Hill in anticipation of the crowds that were expected. The night of the viewing there were over 900 guests and the next day at the funeral, the entire church was filled. This may sound selfish of me, but I was mortified when my friends came to pay their respects and watched the slide show because it was so obvious that my image was missing. Anyone looking at the slide show would look at pictures of me and think that I was just one more friend. There was not one picture that would distinguish us as a couple of twenty years. I looked like one of his buddies. Just some guy.
For the funeral procession, every Cherry Hill Policeman on duty that day was assigned to direct traffic. As I state earlier, I always knew that when Len died things with his family were going to be difficult. They resented me from day one because until I came along, neither his sons nor his sister had any inclination that Len was gay. So along I came and soon became the family scapegoat. I did however expect that his family would show some degree of human decency and wait a week or so before everything hit the fan. Wrong I was because as I was driving his youngest son to the reception that followed the funeral, I was informed that the two older brothers wanted to “screw me”. I assured Matthew that legally there was nothing his brothers could do to me and that I was safe, but the emotional wound of that statement sent me further into shock. I got to the reception and there were his two oldest sons, smiling in my face all the while hoping to, as the youngest said, “screw me”.
At this point I would like to point out that I can be accused of a lot of things, one of them however is not marrying for money. Len was divorced and had to raise three sons on his own with no help from his ex-wife. The house we shared was mortgaged three times over and at the time of his death, he had about nine thousand dollars in the bank. There was nothing to screw me out of.
The day after Len’s funeral his two oldest sons stopped over with their wives along with Len’s sister. It is almost a cliché with gay couples when death occurs that the family comes in and starts taking things that belonged to the departed and the remaining partner has little if any rights to stop them. His one daughter in law started to pack up the china that Len bought when he was married. The very same china that Len and I served countless meals to our friends on. They took pictures, they took personal effects, they basically took anything they wanted and while I did have the legal recourse to stop them as stipulated in the will, I chose not to. I realized that while I lost a partner, his sons lost their father and his sister lost her brother. There were things in that house that as Len’s son belonged to them and I would have never stopped them, but did they have to do it the day after the funeral.
They left with their booty and I sat alone in the house that I shared with Len for twenty years. Pictures that had been hanging in our hallway for years were now gone, china that sat in our china closet for years gone. The next day the family came over and asked me what my plans were, what I thought I wanted to do about the house, etc. From the moment I walked in the door after I found out that Len died I instinctively knew that I could not stay in our home. Even though I could have afforded to, I chose to move. There were too many memories there and I knew if I was going to go on with my life I had to get out of that house. I also knew I had to do everything I could to further protect myself from Len’s family so it was decided that we would put the house on the market.
For those of you who have, or are trying to sell a house, the rule of thumb that realtors tell you is that less is more. Clear the house of any clutter. Take down all personal pictures. Try to make the house to look as move in ready as possible. So not two days after we buried Len, down came what was remaining of the pictures of Len and I. While I was at work one day the family came in and moved furniture, took down more pictures, took a blue willow plate off the mantle (a plate that I had given Len for Christmas one year and that had a great deal of sentimental value to me) and tried to hang the plate up on the wall. I came home to find that the plate had fallen off the wall and the plate was smashed.
What transpired over the next few weeks would take up more column space than allowed. I did however get a phone call from my lawyer who told me that he had just got off the phone with Len’s oldest son and that they were threatening to get their own lawyer, they did not want me to have anything. I knew this was coming. I also knew that as far as Len’s estate was concerned there would be nothing left over. I knew that even if the house did sell there would not be any profit to cover Len’s debts. I knew that I was entitled to a portion of Len’s life insurance and that it would be in my best interest to just take the money and find a place of my own. During a meeting with a realtor and Len’s brother in law and a contractor, which turned into a screaming match between the brother and law and the realtor, my lawyer pulled me aside and told me “get out as quickly as you can”.
So that I did. The insurance money came in and I found a one bedroom apartment. I learned how to cook for myself, I learned how to shop for groceries for myself and I learned how to pay bills and budget my money. Not once has Len’s son’s or sister ever called to see if I was okay or if I needed anything. Oh, I have gotten phone calls from them. Phone calls when they needed something, a favor, or information, but not once have any of them called me just to see how I was doing.
Some people reading this might ask why I am writing this article. Am I trying to tell the world how badly my partner’s family treated me? Am I am pleading my case for gay marriage? The reason I am writing this is because Len’s family erased all traces of Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, Lenny and Chalie, what ever name we chose to go by. I am writing this because I am angry that I was not given the right to mourn the way the rest of the family was. I am angry that I was treated like Len’s dirty little secret and my relationship with him of twenty years was brushed under the carpet. I am angry that Len and Chuck only exist in my heart right now.
It has been over 21 months since Len died and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The worst part though are the dreams I have about him. Every week, at least three times a week I dream about Len and they are never pleasant comforting dreams. I would not wish these dreams on my worst enemy.
I have gotten on with my life. I found someone else to share my life with, someone who understands that there was someone before him whom I still miss dearly. I can watch television again. I can get up in the morning and not want to just crawl back into bed, yet no matter what I do or ever will do there will always be a part of my soul missing. Len was one of those people who was bigger than life. He filled up a room with his presence. I miss his sense of humor, I miss our shared sense of humor, I miss our secret language that we shared and I miss him.
I send e-mails to Len’s old E-mail address about once a week, and until his cell phone was disconnected, I would call just to hear his voice. People ask me what I want. Well what I want is not possible. I want Len alive and healthy. But what I will settle for is for someone to read this article and know that once upon a time, there lived two men, Chuck and Len, and we loved each other very much. We defined marriage. Not just gay marriage, but marriage in general. We loved each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer.
Life is filled with lessons. Some of them are fun, some of them are hard. Some lessons you learn the easy way, others the hard way. If I learned anything about my experience with Len’s death is that resentment is a killer. Resentment just eats at a person’s soul until it becomes an obsession. I held (and sometimes still hold a great deal of resentment against Len’s family). So often I have thought about writing a letter telling them exactly what I thought of them. So often I drove home having an imaginary conversation in my head about how I was going to tell Len’s family off. The resentment I felt consumed me and by the grace of God, and the powers of Facebook, an old friend from high school came back into my life. This friend of mine has been through worse than me. She lost a son when he was only four years old. Through my friendship with her I learned how to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and every time I would start that internal dialogue in my head I would replace it with “I wish them well”.
I have a good life now. I live in Lansdale a community I love. I recently got married in Connecticut and I no longer carry around that anger and hatred in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready, willing or able to sit down with Len’s family and have dinner and I don’t ever want to see them again, but my thoughts are not consumed with hatred and revenge. I wish them well.
Len, I love you, you are the love of my life and I remain forever, your Chalie.
Charles “Chalie” Middleton
When my partner of twenty years died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 17 of 2008 (my 47th birthday) I was faced with the same emotions that countless other widows and widowers have felt since time began. First there was disbelief, then of course an overwhelming sense of numbness that cannot be put into words, then of course fear. How would I live without Len? What about the house we shared? Could I afford the mortgage on my own? Where would I live? Would I ever learn how to cook?
Len and I had been together for twenty years and like any other couple we had more than our fair share of ups and downs. I have always maintained that if anyone ever sat down and listened to his side of the story they would have said “you should leave Chalie (a nick name only he called me, and one, that it breaks my heart to accept, that I will never hear again), and if you ever heard my side of the story, you would have told me I should have left Len years ago. But Len and I had one of those relationships, and all of us, gay or straight, have witnessed, that defied all logic and we just could not live without one another. We needed each other like oxygen in order to survive, and on March 17 my oxygen supply got cut off.
Len was considerably older than me. He was 19 years my senior and as long as I knew him he had a host of medical problems. He battled Chrone’s disease (an auto immune disorder that affects the colon and lower intestine) and in 2001 he had to have a liver transplant as a result of having contracted Hepatitis B during a blood transfusion in the early 80’s before it was mandatory to screen blood donors.
Even though Len was older than me and had many medical issues, I just always assumed that he would live well into his 70’s. I would tease him all the time and tell him that he had come back from the dead more times than Freddy Krueger, so when I got a phone call from Len’s brother in law that “Leonard is gone” I was in shock.
Len was an assistant principal in a high school in Cherry Hill New Jersey and was loved by students, parents and faculty. He was somewhat of a legend in Cherry Hill and we could not go anywhere in the town, state, country or world without him running into someone he knew. Once on a plane to London he ran into an ex student and once while working out in a gym in West Hollywood I heard the familiar words “oh my God, that guy over there was my principal in high school”.
Len’s death made all of the local papers and even made the local evening news. The news stories mentioned how well he was loved by the community and that he was divorced and had three children, all of the information normally mentioned when someone of local prominence passes away. The news stories left out one major detail of Len’s life, and that would be me. Charles Middleton, or Chuck as I am known to most of my friends, or Chalie as I was known to Len.
Not being mentioned in any of the news reports was not that big of shock to me because at the time I was already in such a state of shock that it did not seem to matter. What I did not know was our relationship not being mentioned and me being left out of any news reports was just the beginning. It got worse, far worse than I could ever have imagined.
News of Len’s death spread quickly and soon the telephone began to ring off the hook. I am blessed with a large group of friends and family whom I can depend on in a crisis and by noon of that morning our house was filled with my friends, all doing what ever they could to comfort me. I survived on diet coke and cigarettes, the only two things that seemed to give me comfort.
By mid afternoon his three sons had arrived at our house and the first thing they wanted to see was the will. They had already called our lawyer and asked for a copy of it, but I always knew that when Len died things between me and his family would get ugly. It seems that death brings out the worst in people and when money is involved, things get uglier than you could ever imagine.
I was reassured by his three son’s that I would be part of funeral decisions and I did go to the funeral home with them and gave my input. When it came time to discuss Len’s obituary, I asked that I be listed as his surviving life partner, something that both Len and I had discussed before hand that we both wanted. The funeral director, his sons and his sister did not seem to have any problem with that and I put it out of my mind.
Later that night the family met at Len’s sister’s house so that we could go through pictures of Len’s life for picture slide show at the funeral. We all picked out pictures we liked and there was one of Len and I taken from the back holding hands on the beach that I wanted to be included, but his oldest son thought that that picture “would be putting our relationship in peoples faces and people already knew”. I was stunned, but again, I was still in such a state of shock and was just so numb, I did not know what to say. I had no idea that Len’s sons and sister were so ashamed of the fact that Len was gay that they were going to do everything they could to “sanitize” that aspect of Len’s life when it came to the funeral and the obituary.
Before I left Len’s sister’s house, his oldest son took me aside and told me he got a phone call from the funeral director and was told that since Len was being given a Catholic mass burial, they (meaning the funeral home) were afraid to use the words “Life partner” in the obituary and instead I was to be named as “dear friend”.
I spent twenty years of my life with this man. I had helped nurse him back to health after numerous operations, spent many a night in the emergency room with him as he spiked temperatures as a result of complications of his liver transplant, helped him raise his youngest son and in the course of just one day I had been bumped down in Len’s life to “dear friend”.
The next day his middle son drove me to the funeral home so I could view Len’s body. There he was, my “Lennny” or “Ert” as I would affectionately call him, lying in a casket in a suit that while he was alive we would joke as his “funeral suit”. He looked as handsome as ever. Of all the men I have ever dated, Len was hands down the most handsome man I have ever known. He was tall (6’4”) dark (Italian) and handsome. He resembled an Italian version of Sean Connery with beautiful white hair and a goatee. He never took a bad picture in his life.
I went to the casket and kissed Len and prayed and talked to him. Then I looked at the television monitor that was set up and was showing the slide show of his life and I stared in utter and complete disbelief and thought to myself “oh my God, they didn’t really do this to me, to us, to Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, what ever you want to call us. Out of 116 pictures, there were 9 pictures of me included in the slide show. Basically my life with Len was allotted one picture for every two years we were together. While I did realize, and to this day continue to realize, that Len had a life and a family before he met me, and that his sons wanted to remember their father as a family man, I was a huge part of Len’s life. Shortly before Len died, we had reached a stage in our relationship where things could have gone one way or another. Like many “married” couples, we had once again got to the point where you reassess the relationship and decide whether you want to continue or break up. We decided to stay together and after a tearful afternoon filled with confessions and apologies on both our parts Len hugged me and said “Ya know Chal, when all is said and done, you are still the best thing that ever happened to me”. How sad that the person that Len thought of as the best thing that ever happened to him was given just 9 pictures in a slide show that consisted of over a hundred (most of those pictures used had been taken by me).
Len’s funeral was huge. It was held at the largest church in Cherry Hill in anticipation of the crowds that were expected. The night of the viewing there were over 900 guests and the next day at the funeral, the entire church was filled. This may sound selfish of me, but I was mortified when my friends came to pay their respects and watched the slide show because it was so obvious that my image was missing. Anyone looking at the slide show would look at pictures of me and think that I was just one more friend. There was not one picture that would distinguish us as a couple of twenty years. I looked like one of his buddies. Just some guy.
For the funeral procession, every Cherry Hill Policeman on duty that day was assigned to direct traffic. As I state earlier, I always knew that when Len died things with his family were going to be difficult. They resented me from day one because until I came along, neither his sons nor his sister had any inclination that Len was gay. So along I came and soon became the family scapegoat. I did however expect that his family would show some degree of human decency and wait a week or so before everything hit the fan. Wrong I was because as I was driving his youngest son to the reception that followed the funeral, I was informed that the two older brothers wanted to “screw me”. I assured Matthew that legally there was nothing his brothers could do to me and that I was safe, but the emotional wound of that statement sent me further into shock. I got to the reception and there were his two oldest sons, smiling in my face all the while hoping to, as the youngest said, “screw me”.
At this point I would like to point out that I can be accused of a lot of things, one of them however is not marrying for money. Len was divorced and had to raise three sons on his own with no help from his ex-wife. The house we shared was mortgaged three times over and at the time of his death, he had about nine thousand dollars in the bank. There was nothing to screw me out of.
The day after Len’s funeral his two oldest sons stopped over with their wives along with Len’s sister. It is almost a cliché with gay couples when death occurs that the family comes in and starts taking things that belonged to the departed and the remaining partner has little if any rights to stop them. His one daughter in law started to pack up the china that Len bought when he was married. The very same china that Len and I served countless meals to our friends on. They took pictures, they took personal effects, they basically took anything they wanted and while I did have the legal recourse to stop them as stipulated in the will, I chose not to. I realized that while I lost a partner, his sons lost their father and his sister lost her brother. There were things in that house that as Len’s son belonged to them and I would have never stopped them, but did they have to do it the day after the funeral.
They left with their booty and I sat alone in the house that I shared with Len for twenty years. Pictures that had been hanging in our hallway for years were now gone, china that sat in our china closet for years gone. The next day the family came over and asked me what my plans were, what I thought I wanted to do about the house, etc. From the moment I walked in the door after I found out that Len died I instinctively knew that I could not stay in our home. Even though I could have afforded to, I chose to move. There were too many memories there and I knew if I was going to go on with my life I had to get out of that house. I also knew I had to do everything I could to further protect myself from Len’s family so it was decided that we would put the house on the market.
For those of you who have, or are trying to sell a house, the rule of thumb that realtors tell you is that less is more. Clear the house of any clutter. Take down all personal pictures. Try to make the house to look as move in ready as possible. So not two days after we buried Len, down came what was remaining of the pictures of Len and I. While I was at work one day the family came in and moved furniture, took down more pictures, took a blue willow plate off the mantle (a plate that I had given Len for Christmas one year and that had a great deal of sentimental value to me) and tried to hang the plate up on the wall. I came home to find that the plate had fallen off the wall and the plate was smashed.
What transpired over the next few weeks would take up more column space than allowed. I did however get a phone call from my lawyer who told me that he had just got off the phone with Len’s oldest son and that they were threatening to get their own lawyer, they did not want me to have anything. I knew this was coming. I also knew that as far as Len’s estate was concerned there would be nothing left over. I knew that even if the house did sell there would not be any profit to cover Len’s debts. I knew that I was entitled to a portion of Len’s life insurance and that it would be in my best interest to just take the money and find a place of my own. During a meeting with a realtor and Len’s brother in law and a contractor, which turned into a screaming match between the brother and law and the realtor, my lawyer pulled me aside and told me “get out as quickly as you can”.
So that I did. The insurance money came in and I found a one bedroom apartment. I learned how to cook for myself, I learned how to shop for groceries for myself and I learned how to pay bills and budget my money. Not once has Len’s son’s or sister ever called to see if I was okay or if I needed anything. Oh, I have gotten phone calls from them. Phone calls when they needed something, a favor, or information, but not once have any of them called me just to see how I was doing.
Some people reading this might ask why I am writing this article. Am I trying to tell the world how badly my partner’s family treated me? Am I am pleading my case for gay marriage? The reason I am writing this is because Len’s family erased all traces of Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, Lenny and Chalie, what ever name we chose to go by. I am writing this because I am angry that I was not given the right to mourn the way the rest of the family was. I am angry that I was treated like Len’s dirty little secret and my relationship with him of twenty years was brushed under the carpet. I am angry that Len and Chuck only exist in my heart right now.
It has been over 21 months since Len died and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The worst part though are the dreams I have about him. Every week, at least three times a week I dream about Len and they are never pleasant comforting dreams. I would not wish these dreams on my worst enemy.
I have gotten on with my life. I found someone else to share my life with, someone who understands that there was someone before him whom I still miss dearly. I can watch television again. I can get up in the morning and not want to just crawl back into bed, yet no matter what I do or ever will do there will always be a part of my soul missing. Len was one of those people who was bigger than life. He filled up a room with his presence. I miss his sense of humor, I miss our shared sense of humor, I miss our secret language that we shared and I miss him.
I send e-mails to Len’s old E-mail address about once a week, and until his cell phone was disconnected, I would call just to hear his voice. People ask me what I want. Well what I want is not possible. I want Len alive and healthy. But what I will settle for is for someone to read this article and know that once upon a time, there lived two men, Chuck and Len, and we loved each other very much. We defined marriage. Not just gay marriage, but marriage in general. We loved each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer.
Life is filled with lessons. Some of them are fun, some of them are hard. Some lessons you learn the easy way, others the hard way. If I learned anything about my experience with Len’s death is that resentment is a killer. Resentment just eats at a person’s soul until it becomes an obsession. I held (and sometimes still hold a great deal of resentment against Len’s family). So often I have thought about writing a letter telling them exactly what I thought of them. So often I drove home having an imaginary conversation in my head about how I was going to tell Len’s family off. The resentment I felt consumed me and by the grace of God, and the powers of Facebook, an old friend from high school came back into my life. This friend of mine has been through worse than me. She lost a son when he was only four years old. Through my friendship with her I learned how to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and every time I would start that internal dialogue in my head I would replace it with “I wish them well”.
I have a good life now. I live in Lansdale a community I love. I recently got married in Connecticut and I no longer carry around that anger and hatred in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready, willing or able to sit down with Len’s family and have dinner and I don’t ever want to see them again, but my thoughts are not consumed with hatred and revenge. I wish them well.
Len, I love you, you are the love of my life and I remain forever, your Chalie.
Charles “Chalie” Middleton
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Cocktails on the Carpathia
In a long since out of print book called “Is There Life After High School”, the late Frank Zappa is quoted as saying that “High School is not a time or a place, but a state of mind”. Well on September 19, 2009, I had the opportunity to revisit that state of mind known as high school as I attended a pre-high school reunion mixer. Since I am from out of town, and the chances of anyone from my hometown reading this are pretty slim, just as the chances of anyone from the Lansdale area knowing anyone from the Steinert High School Class of 79 are pretty slim, I feel somewhat safe writing this article.
My friends and I from this era are a lost generation of sorts, we are too young to remember when Kennedy was shot and entirely too old to even be remotely interested in any band that came along after Guns N Roses-and even that is a stretch. Our older brothers and sisters of the late sixties had Woodstock and the Summer of Love, Viet Nam and Nixon to rally against, we had Three Mile Island and Jimmy Carter, and the closest thing that we could muster to pass as social consciousness was a 1979 Musicians United for Safer Energy (MUSE) concert at Madison Square Garden . It was rock and roll making a statement against nuclear power. Truth be told, we could not have cared less about safer energy or nuclear power we just wanted to see Bruce Springsteen play as he was the headliner and tickets were nearly impossible to come by.
In high school, I was the classic under achiever, a straight C student who never once uttered the words “will there be extra credit on this assisgnment”, a geek to the core, I stood in awe of the football players and the cheerleaders, the anointed chosen ones of all high school classes, not feeling worthy to look them in the eye, let alone attempt a friendship with any of them. It’s funny when you think about it, the almost universal hatred of cheerleaders. Talk to anyone who was not a cheerleader or anyone who never dated a cheerleader and the response is pretty much universal, first a groan, then a statement of a wish that they are now all fat and unhappy when truth be told, most cheerleaders were really nobody more than girls lucky enough to be good at gymnastics.
Not being invited to one single party or social event in all of high school, I reverted into the fantasy world of my bedroom A world that was adorned with posters of Humprhey Bogart and Bruce Springsteen, two men I idolize to this day. I would have given anything to have had Bogart’s self assurance, dry wit and fighting ability, and Bruce Springsteen, well he sung to me about escaping the small town in New Jersey I grew up in. If Bruce Springsteen, a bus drivers son from Freehold, could find his Rosalita and walk in the sun, well then there was hope for an acne faced kid like myself.
I spent many a night in high school dreaming of the revenge I was going to wreak on the class of 1979. Don’t worry readers, not revenge of the Carrie type, I had (and to this day still don’t have) any desire to see any of my classmates covered in pigs blood (okay, maybe one or two), but I thought for sure I would somehow transform myself into a swashbuckling, Academy Award winning modern day Errol Flynn and pull up to my high school reunion in a long black limo and rub my success in everyone’s faces. Needless to say, Hollywood never called and I don’t have an Academy Award (I did however manage a small walk on part in the Bruce Willis movies 12 Monkeys as the guard who while goofing off reading a newspaper, allows Bruce Willis to escape the mental hospital. My three seconds of screen time and later a vacation to Universal Studios in California were about as close as I was gonna get to my “run away American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences dream”.
As any reader, say, over the age of maybe 35 knows, life does not always work out the way we planned. John Lennon said it best when he said “life is what happens when we are making plans”, and oh did life happen. Life happened to all of us and thirty years later our Senior Prom theme of Always and Forever should be renamed “Cocktails on the Carpathia (the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titantic).
In the thirty years since we have graduated, my classmates and I have pretty much managed to make a mess of our lives, and yet like the Energizer Bunny in the commercial, we keep on going. Out of a class of over 400, there are multiple divorces, countless dui’s, stints at rehab, affairs gone awry (as all affairs do), unrealized dreams and that does not even take into consideration the agony of watching helplessly as our kids make the same mistakes we made, and we watch knowing that there is nothing we can say that will help them avoid the pitfalls of life, those mistakes you make in your twenties, that you carry with you for the rest of your life.
You can say a lot of things about the Steinert High School Class of 79, but let me say for the record, we are survivors and have earned our place on the Carpathia doing everything we could think of to secure our place on a lifeboat with limited seating, and unlike our predecessors on the Titanic, that ill fated floating caste system commandeered by Captain Edward Smith, social standing and who you know had nothing to do with our ability to survive.
Our high school reunions seemed to have gone through this curious, yet reaffirming transformation over the years. For the first ten to twenty years, we all stood around strutting our stuff, each of us trying to impress the other. Who had the best car, the biggest house, the best paying job, yet during our 25th reunion, there seemed to be a non spoken shift in allegiances. Our In Memoriam Wall, the wall reserved for those classmates who have passed away, seemed to have nearly doubled in the last ten years. It seemed that addiction, AIDS, cancer and other assorted untimely deaths had affected us, and all of a sudden it did not matter if you were a jock, a geek or the class president (who I might add, in one of the strangest twists of fate in my life is now one of my best friends-go figure), all that mattered was that you showed up, you were healthy and you made the effort to show up.
At the25th reunion, there was a very strange pall hanging over the catering hall. Where in the past we beat our chests and struted our stuff, this time around we seemed to wander around with expressions on our faces akin to deer caught in headlights. It was like we were all asking ourselves “Is this it? Is this what life has given us?”. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people in my class who are happy, plenty of people who’s marriages have not only survived, but have actually thrived and plenty of people with children who’s accomplishments are that which make a parent proud. But for many of us, the question of the night seemed to be “what happened”? Had we really turned into characters from Brue Springsteen songs, not factory workers, but mostly white collar workers, but with the same worries and disapointments that Mr. Springsteen has made a career singing about.
Five years have passed since our 25th reunion and so much has changed in the world. We have witnessed the election of the first African American man to the White House (though some, if not all, of my Republican friends are not too happy with this-not because the president is black, but because he is a Democrat-guess what guys-the country swings one way one election, and then the opposite way another election, you guys will get your chance again), we have seen our country go to war yet again, so many of our pensions and retirement savings were effected by the stock market crash of 2008, but the one change that seems to have had the biggest effect on my class has been the internet, and social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. My best friend in the world, Dawn Sizemore Breza, a Republican to my Democrat, and I often joke that Facebook is the evil love child of Al Gore and George Bush. Al Gore who claims to have invented the internet, and George Bush for his Patriot Act which allows the president and the CIA with more access to our personal information. Once thought of as merely social outlets for teenagers and college kids, Facebook alone has brought together more people in my class than anything else. Through the wonder of technology, old friends, old acquaintances and friends of friends have re-connected in such a way that though in some cases we are separated by many miles, we are able to build relationships with one another on a day to day basis, and that ability to build relationships was just not there, or if was there, was not as popular as it is today.
I guess the point I am trying to make, is that those of us on the Carpathia, those of us who survived the iceberg of life are now huddled together, sharing blankets, and sharing our strengths, exposing our weaknesses and just becoming friends. In high school, we are set in a caste system that is harder break then anything that Calcutta can offer, yet thirty years later, it seems that caste system no longer exists, and recovering geeks like myself, can slow dance with two of the prettiest girls that ever graced the halls of Steinert High School, and I can see the Captain of the football team and former class president and enjoy a friendly hug and a hearty laugh at an inside joke we share about his resemblance to Commander Virgil Tracey, a puppet from a 1960’s children show called “Thunderbirds Are Go”.
So often when we think of the past, we romanticize it, we think of our teenage years as our golden years, we were so young and innocent then. Young, yes, innocent, not the class of 79, that is for sure. When I think about who we were, who I was in high school, innocence does not come to mind. No, we were a bunch of self indulgent, narcissistic, catty, selfish jealous brats. Long ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates bemoaned the state of teenagers, calling them lazy and selfish. Socrates was right, we were lazy and we were selfish, caring only for our immediate needs with no concept of the world around us.
Thankfully, at least as far as the Steinert High School Class of 1979 goes, that has all changed. Don’t get me wrong readers, we have not transformed ourselves into a sect of chaste monks with vows of poverty, but we have learned lessons, lessons that could never have been taught to us in high school or even college. We have learned what it is to be a friend through thick and thin. We have learned how to cope with the loss of love or the loss of security and we have learned how to be there for one another.
The years have not been real kind to a lot of us. At the age of 47 I became a widower, another classmate of mine watched her husband die of a heart attack while playing basketball, some have lost children, some of us (including myself) have lost our homes and are either living with family members or in apartments. So many of us are feeling the crunch of the economy, our once thriving businesses are slowing down and even dying, yet something in us tells us to keep on going, to keep showing up.
I look at my former classmates so much differently now. I no longer feel any competition with any of them, I feel no glee or joy at a cheerleader or ex jock with a weight problem and my heart goes out to any class members who have lost loved ones such as I have. I used to think of my high school reunions as a way of showing off, now I see them as a way of showing up. The late John F. Kennedy in his now famous inaugural address baited Americans to ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country. Regardless of your feelings about the late president, he had a point. I now ask myself what can I offer to my classmates? How can I help them?. We have seen it all, my class of 79 classmates, we have been through the perfect storm and we have made it to the other side.
Our actual class reunion is scheduled for November and it will be interesting to see who shows up and if they feel the same way I do. Despite the various drama surrounding our pre reunion get together, it was apparent to me that so many of us learned that now more than ever, we need to have each others backs.
Readers, life is precious and short. One minute you are 17 at the Spectrum watching Bruce Springsteen, and in a blink of an eye, he is on the cover of the latest AARP magazine. We live in a age where tracking down lost friends is easier than it has ever been and I urge you all to do so. Put down the old petty resentments, forgive and ask to be forgiven. I used to base my self worth on my career and the amount of money I made. No longer. I may not have a skill set that can bring in a high six figure salary, but I can help a friend in need. God bless, and Godspeed the Steinert High School Class of 1979.
My friends and I from this era are a lost generation of sorts, we are too young to remember when Kennedy was shot and entirely too old to even be remotely interested in any band that came along after Guns N Roses-and even that is a stretch. Our older brothers and sisters of the late sixties had Woodstock and the Summer of Love, Viet Nam and Nixon to rally against, we had Three Mile Island and Jimmy Carter, and the closest thing that we could muster to pass as social consciousness was a 1979 Musicians United for Safer Energy (MUSE) concert at Madison Square Garden . It was rock and roll making a statement against nuclear power. Truth be told, we could not have cared less about safer energy or nuclear power we just wanted to see Bruce Springsteen play as he was the headliner and tickets were nearly impossible to come by.
In high school, I was the classic under achiever, a straight C student who never once uttered the words “will there be extra credit on this assisgnment”, a geek to the core, I stood in awe of the football players and the cheerleaders, the anointed chosen ones of all high school classes, not feeling worthy to look them in the eye, let alone attempt a friendship with any of them. It’s funny when you think about it, the almost universal hatred of cheerleaders. Talk to anyone who was not a cheerleader or anyone who never dated a cheerleader and the response is pretty much universal, first a groan, then a statement of a wish that they are now all fat and unhappy when truth be told, most cheerleaders were really nobody more than girls lucky enough to be good at gymnastics.
Not being invited to one single party or social event in all of high school, I reverted into the fantasy world of my bedroom A world that was adorned with posters of Humprhey Bogart and Bruce Springsteen, two men I idolize to this day. I would have given anything to have had Bogart’s self assurance, dry wit and fighting ability, and Bruce Springsteen, well he sung to me about escaping the small town in New Jersey I grew up in. If Bruce Springsteen, a bus drivers son from Freehold, could find his Rosalita and walk in the sun, well then there was hope for an acne faced kid like myself.
I spent many a night in high school dreaming of the revenge I was going to wreak on the class of 1979. Don’t worry readers, not revenge of the Carrie type, I had (and to this day still don’t have) any desire to see any of my classmates covered in pigs blood (okay, maybe one or two), but I thought for sure I would somehow transform myself into a swashbuckling, Academy Award winning modern day Errol Flynn and pull up to my high school reunion in a long black limo and rub my success in everyone’s faces. Needless to say, Hollywood never called and I don’t have an Academy Award (I did however manage a small walk on part in the Bruce Willis movies 12 Monkeys as the guard who while goofing off reading a newspaper, allows Bruce Willis to escape the mental hospital. My three seconds of screen time and later a vacation to Universal Studios in California were about as close as I was gonna get to my “run away American Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences dream”.
As any reader, say, over the age of maybe 35 knows, life does not always work out the way we planned. John Lennon said it best when he said “life is what happens when we are making plans”, and oh did life happen. Life happened to all of us and thirty years later our Senior Prom theme of Always and Forever should be renamed “Cocktails on the Carpathia (the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titantic).
In the thirty years since we have graduated, my classmates and I have pretty much managed to make a mess of our lives, and yet like the Energizer Bunny in the commercial, we keep on going. Out of a class of over 400, there are multiple divorces, countless dui’s, stints at rehab, affairs gone awry (as all affairs do), unrealized dreams and that does not even take into consideration the agony of watching helplessly as our kids make the same mistakes we made, and we watch knowing that there is nothing we can say that will help them avoid the pitfalls of life, those mistakes you make in your twenties, that you carry with you for the rest of your life.
You can say a lot of things about the Steinert High School Class of 79, but let me say for the record, we are survivors and have earned our place on the Carpathia doing everything we could think of to secure our place on a lifeboat with limited seating, and unlike our predecessors on the Titanic, that ill fated floating caste system commandeered by Captain Edward Smith, social standing and who you know had nothing to do with our ability to survive.
Our high school reunions seemed to have gone through this curious, yet reaffirming transformation over the years. For the first ten to twenty years, we all stood around strutting our stuff, each of us trying to impress the other. Who had the best car, the biggest house, the best paying job, yet during our 25th reunion, there seemed to be a non spoken shift in allegiances. Our In Memoriam Wall, the wall reserved for those classmates who have passed away, seemed to have nearly doubled in the last ten years. It seemed that addiction, AIDS, cancer and other assorted untimely deaths had affected us, and all of a sudden it did not matter if you were a jock, a geek or the class president (who I might add, in one of the strangest twists of fate in my life is now one of my best friends-go figure), all that mattered was that you showed up, you were healthy and you made the effort to show up.
At the25th reunion, there was a very strange pall hanging over the catering hall. Where in the past we beat our chests and struted our stuff, this time around we seemed to wander around with expressions on our faces akin to deer caught in headlights. It was like we were all asking ourselves “Is this it? Is this what life has given us?”. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people in my class who are happy, plenty of people who’s marriages have not only survived, but have actually thrived and plenty of people with children who’s accomplishments are that which make a parent proud. But for many of us, the question of the night seemed to be “what happened”? Had we really turned into characters from Brue Springsteen songs, not factory workers, but mostly white collar workers, but with the same worries and disapointments that Mr. Springsteen has made a career singing about.
Five years have passed since our 25th reunion and so much has changed in the world. We have witnessed the election of the first African American man to the White House (though some, if not all, of my Republican friends are not too happy with this-not because the president is black, but because he is a Democrat-guess what guys-the country swings one way one election, and then the opposite way another election, you guys will get your chance again), we have seen our country go to war yet again, so many of our pensions and retirement savings were effected by the stock market crash of 2008, but the one change that seems to have had the biggest effect on my class has been the internet, and social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. My best friend in the world, Dawn Sizemore Breza, a Republican to my Democrat, and I often joke that Facebook is the evil love child of Al Gore and George Bush. Al Gore who claims to have invented the internet, and George Bush for his Patriot Act which allows the president and the CIA with more access to our personal information. Once thought of as merely social outlets for teenagers and college kids, Facebook alone has brought together more people in my class than anything else. Through the wonder of technology, old friends, old acquaintances and friends of friends have re-connected in such a way that though in some cases we are separated by many miles, we are able to build relationships with one another on a day to day basis, and that ability to build relationships was just not there, or if was there, was not as popular as it is today.
I guess the point I am trying to make, is that those of us on the Carpathia, those of us who survived the iceberg of life are now huddled together, sharing blankets, and sharing our strengths, exposing our weaknesses and just becoming friends. In high school, we are set in a caste system that is harder break then anything that Calcutta can offer, yet thirty years later, it seems that caste system no longer exists, and recovering geeks like myself, can slow dance with two of the prettiest girls that ever graced the halls of Steinert High School, and I can see the Captain of the football team and former class president and enjoy a friendly hug and a hearty laugh at an inside joke we share about his resemblance to Commander Virgil Tracey, a puppet from a 1960’s children show called “Thunderbirds Are Go”.
So often when we think of the past, we romanticize it, we think of our teenage years as our golden years, we were so young and innocent then. Young, yes, innocent, not the class of 79, that is for sure. When I think about who we were, who I was in high school, innocence does not come to mind. No, we were a bunch of self indulgent, narcissistic, catty, selfish jealous brats. Long ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates bemoaned the state of teenagers, calling them lazy and selfish. Socrates was right, we were lazy and we were selfish, caring only for our immediate needs with no concept of the world around us.
Thankfully, at least as far as the Steinert High School Class of 1979 goes, that has all changed. Don’t get me wrong readers, we have not transformed ourselves into a sect of chaste monks with vows of poverty, but we have learned lessons, lessons that could never have been taught to us in high school or even college. We have learned what it is to be a friend through thick and thin. We have learned how to cope with the loss of love or the loss of security and we have learned how to be there for one another.
The years have not been real kind to a lot of us. At the age of 47 I became a widower, another classmate of mine watched her husband die of a heart attack while playing basketball, some have lost children, some of us (including myself) have lost our homes and are either living with family members or in apartments. So many of us are feeling the crunch of the economy, our once thriving businesses are slowing down and even dying, yet something in us tells us to keep on going, to keep showing up.
I look at my former classmates so much differently now. I no longer feel any competition with any of them, I feel no glee or joy at a cheerleader or ex jock with a weight problem and my heart goes out to any class members who have lost loved ones such as I have. I used to think of my high school reunions as a way of showing off, now I see them as a way of showing up. The late John F. Kennedy in his now famous inaugural address baited Americans to ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country. Regardless of your feelings about the late president, he had a point. I now ask myself what can I offer to my classmates? How can I help them?. We have seen it all, my class of 79 classmates, we have been through the perfect storm and we have made it to the other side.
Our actual class reunion is scheduled for November and it will be interesting to see who shows up and if they feel the same way I do. Despite the various drama surrounding our pre reunion get together, it was apparent to me that so many of us learned that now more than ever, we need to have each others backs.
Readers, life is precious and short. One minute you are 17 at the Spectrum watching Bruce Springsteen, and in a blink of an eye, he is on the cover of the latest AARP magazine. We live in a age where tracking down lost friends is easier than it has ever been and I urge you all to do so. Put down the old petty resentments, forgive and ask to be forgiven. I used to base my self worth on my career and the amount of money I made. No longer. I may not have a skill set that can bring in a high six figure salary, but I can help a friend in need. God bless, and Godspeed the Steinert High School Class of 1979.
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