When Angels Cry...

How a young man came to understand the definition of his life

When Angels Cry

One of the great things about this current phase of my 60-year-old life is that I get to talk with a lot of young artists about the so-called good ol’ days of queer life and pop music long before their time. I won’t lie, I enjoy sharing stories of who did what, where, and why… and what hit songs came out of it. I love it even more when the conversation gets deep, like it did a few days ago.

A young fella asked me a pretty profound question. What is the one thing that has defined me as a queer man. After taking a deep breath, I said the first thing that came to mind: Death.

The poor kid was speechless, so I explained…

Before I fully understood what AIDS was or meant, men were dying around me. I was barely out of high school when all hell broke loose. These men were young and beautiful, and they were deeply confused and enraged by a disease that stalked and killed them seemingly for no reason other than they lived their lives with truth, joy, and sexual confidence. As I matured into a proud member of the ACT-UP generation of activists, death had become both shattering and numbingly common. If someone fell off the social grid for longer than a few days, dread and fear would sink in as you searched to see if he was okay (i.e. alive).

By the time folks started to celebrate life-sustaining drugs and PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis], I had personally buried literally hundreds of my friends, ex-boyfriends, and colleagues. Lots of death. Lots. I also found my husband; a remarkable man who had nearly died from AIDS-related complications several years before we met.

We fought like hell to survive as a serodiscordant couple in a world where men like my husband were shunned by the society – including even our queer brothers. The stigma of an HIV or AIDS diagnosis seemed to disqualify you from “mixing” with HIV-negative people. They were also often discouraged from planning a future, even though there were drugs that were keeping them thoroughly healthy.

For several years, AIDS, and the potential for death, was an omnipresent third partner in my relationship. How could I, as an HIV-negative man, want to tie myself to a finite relationship that would end in tragedy? That was a constant question from everyone, including my husband. This was despite his undeniably good health and my own tenuous health due to being overweight.

Twenty-plus years later, we’re still happily married – and he is undetectable and undeniably more robust than I will ever be. Yet, his experience with HIV haunts him, even when he swears it doesn’t.

Now at the age of 60, there’s a new kind of death surrounding me. These are far more “mainstream” afflictions like heart disease. Diabetes. Cancer. Suicide. I’ve had my own brushes with death via bypass surgery and COVID. It’s become common for me to check my email or Facebook to discover another friend is gone. Yesterday, I marked the passing of an old pal from my Bear Pageant days. The diabetes he contracted as a side-effect to long-term use of an HIV drug broke his body down. There was no coming back. That’s in addition to two friends with new cancer diagnoses, and another friend whose husband simply woke up and died in my friend’s arms unexpectedly.

For queer dudes my age, there hasn’t been a breather from death as a front-burner issue. It has been everywhere and frequent for as long as I can recall. I think about it constantly. Every ache in my body feels like the final blow to my life. It sucks. I feel cheated of my era of carefree, youthful invincibility. And even though I’m delighted that younger queer folks don’t have the same death knell hanging over their heads now, I am often irrationally angry about it at the same time – especially when some of those same kids discount my generation as irrelevant and out of touch.

And yet we keep pushing. That’s one of the reasons why I spend so much time concentrating on my new life in Wales with my husband much in the way that I used to concentrate on work, which I still love and lucky to do. It’s mostly positive, and it keeps me from being “that guy” … the one we all avoid because he’s a downer. Life is a joy to be celebrated, and I do exactly that as often as humanly possible. I’ve also grown to wear the defining word and experiences of my life as badges of honor. I am unbelievably proud that I come from an era during which men and women – and everyone of all other gorgeous identifications – united to help each other. There is something oddly romantic about how being as the singer/songwriter Bruce Cockburn once called “lovers in a dangerous time” made us generally kinder, gentler, and more forgiving of each other’s foibles. We were interlocked in ways that the current generation isn’t and will likely never be.

It was an act of finding beauty amid a devastatingly ugly landscape of life.

To that end, I smile when I look back and share stories with young queer people today. I pray they will never suffer as much as so many before them have. But I also pray that they find a way to truly understand the legacy their genetic orientation has given them.

As I have been typing these words, one song keeps swirling around my brain… my all of the angels who have been lost rest well.

When Angels Cry
(Words and music by Janis Ian)

Wait, your tired arms must rest
Let this moment pass
Wait until the morning
Close your eyes and you will see
who you used to be
left without a warning
Who knew one so big could grow so small
Lighter than the writing on the wall

When angels cry, can I stand by
When stones weep, can my heart sleep
Wish I'd never heard, wish I'd never heard
Wish I'd never heard
the power of a four letter word

'Cause only love will matter in the end
for a woman or a man
What's the difference now
Here we live with bottles
and needles and truth
Here is your living proof
that death cannot be proud
Some say it's a judgement on us all
I can't believe that God could be that small

When angels cry, can I stand by
When stones weep, can my heart sleep
Wish I'd never heard, wish I'd never heard
Wish I'd never heard
the power of a four letter word
If ever was a rose that longed to bloom
If ever was a heart that longed to fly
If ever was an angel, it was you
So close your eyes and say goodbye
Goodbye

When angels cry, I can't stand by
When stones weep, I can't sleep
Guess I've finally learned
Guess I've finally learned
Yes, I've finally learned
that love is just a four letter word
Hope is just a four letter word