For lack of a better title I hope that what I write here will give you guys an idea of my meaning.
Tonight I renewed my friendship with a guy I have known now for about five years. He is partnered with a 78 year old man. My friend is about 45. He is a hot fella from Venezuela. I have never met his partner. We lost contact with each other for well over a year. Our friendship goes back to a time when I recruited him for an income tax course and then later saw to it that he worked as a preparer in my office.
With that as background, when we got together tonight we met at a college bistro and had a cup of coffee. We were excited to see each other and we updated each other with what we had been doing since last we saw each other over a year ago. For his part he told me a touching story about his partner. The partner was having medical issues with both his kidneys and his liver. The doctors seemed to actually make the situation worse with the treatments they prescribed. Things progressed to such an extent that my friend's partner was told he had only three months to live and he should consider getting his affairs in order and look at hospice care. Well, the guy did both. But the interesting thing was that while in hospice care the staff gave helpful hints about a variety of things - from what foods to eat, to avoiding salt in his diet, and a host of other things. The bottom line was that my friend was steadfast in supporting his partner in every respect throughout this period. With his support his partner learned how to walk again, can carry on a conversation, walks on a treadmill daily for mile at a time. The three months came and went - just last month my friend and his partner made a trip to Duluth, MN - to (as my friend said) "see how independent you are..." The trip was fantastic, his partner is now self sufficient and life is good.
As my friend said, "doctors just look at test results, refer to statistics and studies and make projections about how long a person might have among the living..." In this case, the partner is well beyond the three months the doctors told him he had to live... Life has completely returned to normal between the two of them.
The point of this story is that were it not for my friend and his devotion to his partner the guy might simply have been relegated to hospice to die (literally). After all, there was no family who could or would provide support to the level of intensity required for his situation. Without my friend this guy likely would have simply given up, accepted the diagnosis as final, and the rest would have been history.
For me, this is illustrative of the ability of men to exhibit a level of compassion that is every bit as significant as we typically think only women can be - that is, to be care givers even under the worst of circumstances. It is easy to be a partner when all is well and everyone is healthy. It is not so easy to remain committed and genuinely compassionate when one's partner is not doing so well...
Another guy I know is in his late 30s. He has a partner in his late 70s. This partner too requires extraordinary care on a daily basis. The prognosis is not good and his care he requires is extensive. This young guy is totally devoted to the man. Obviously, if the relationship between the two were only about sex I suspect the partnership would have dissolved long ago. The situation between the two of them has now been ongoing for several years, yet the 30 something guy remains devoted and caring to this day. He asks nothing and expects nothing. He is genuinely humble and unpretentious.
When I learned about this about three years ago I was totally blown away as it never dawned on me that one man could be so committed and devoted to another in such a compassionate and loving way. Perhaps I never had occasion to even consider that such could be the case. But for a young guy to be so compassionate for an older guy without giving it a second thought just still makes me very humble.
The assumptions I made were due to lack of information. Until I met these two guys and heard their stories about their partners and how committed each is to the other I had never even considered this would (might) be the case. After all, my only experience with such things in my own family and others I know was that it was always a woman who cared for an elderly parent - I never heard of a son providing such care. It was always the daughter caring for either the mother or the father - the sons either were considered inept, too involved in work to be spared, or it was just assumed that a woman was a natural care giver. How wrong to not even consider that a man could be a care giver for his a partner the same as any of us might for a parent!
I just wanted to share the two stories as best I can recall them...
If you are one of those, give me a shout. :) Did I say that with my outloud voice?
This particular party was held at a house on a main street close to the central campus. One of the punch bowls was marked "electric" and nobody had to ask what that meant. Just as the party was getting started 3 obviously univited guests walked through the house wide-eyed at all the wildly dressed, alternate life-style guests. They quickly left, obviously lost.
2 hours later they returned with 5 of their friends, all drunk. 30 or so of the 60 people there were milling on the large, railed front porch when up comes 8 drunk frat boys yelling "faggot, cocksucker" and other compliments. So here stands a group of drunk, rowdy frat boys at the bottom of the steps against a group of 30 or so, very high most queers. The queers are pushing back against thrown punches and one guy was thrown through the front door. Just as the mellee was starting to get intense along comes Sheila D walking towards the party. Sheila really didn't fall into a clear box, she was a nursing student who came to one of our parties and liked the people and kept coming back. She was straight but not really a fag hag, she was just Sheila. She started yelling, "STOP, stop hurting my friends" when she saw what was going on as she came up the street. One of the frat boys looked over at her and shouted, "shut the fuck up nigger".
In an instant the heretofore defensive queers turned into offensive Gay I Joes. No long limp wristed they began to pummel the frat boys who were shocked the sudden reversal in roles. They backed of and ran to their VW bus followed by an angry mob or irate queers. We surrounded their van, beating on the doors and windows and rocking the van back and forth trying to turn it over.
In thinking back it is ironic that gay men would allow frat boys to call them faggots without becoming angry but become instantly aroused when a friend was subject to racist taunts. But it made me proud that we cared enough about Sheila who didn't even really belong to our group but was accepted anyway. That was also the beginning of fighting back at the gay bar where straight high school boys would wait for single gay men to leave and beat them up. We were already politically fighting back at that point but that night that we began physical fighting back. A black woman walking up the street who cared about us and who we cared about started something new that night. It also made me proud to be gay, queer, faggot, cocksucker. Yes I am all of those things and proud of it.
Blessings on ALL of us