A gay man in his thirties in the ’90s was getting to be a novelty. By the time I reached thirty-five, I had been to funerals, wakes, and memorials for more men in my generation than could have ever been predicted. AIDS killed friends, and made the prospect of sex and intimacy with another gay man at the very least complicated, and at the very worst, deadly. Before the drug discoveries that came to make HIV, for the most part, a manageable chronic condition, it was a daily and unwelcome worry in most gay men’s lives. It was, my friend Cliff put it, “Like living on a volcano, waiting for it to erupt but refusing to give it more power by talking about it.” Cliff, a handsome, funny, rising star at Proctor & Gamble died of AIDS at the horrifically unfair age of 36. His parents refused to come to his wake.
At the height of the HIV epidemic, my six-year relationship with Calvin Furman found its expiration date, and I found myself gratefully single and professionally restless at the same time. The year had been, by all measures, a year of loss.
The relationship, which had run its course, was finally over after a year of couple’s therapy that ended with my final words, “Let’s shoot this horse.” Aside from the division of “stuff,” there was the inevitable division of territory and worse, friendships. It had never occurred to me that our good friends might take sides. But then, I was naïve.
In a gesture of civility, Calvin and I decided to tell our closest friends about our decision to conclude our relationship by announcing it over dinner. We took this strategic approach to telling our closest gay couple. In the car on the way to Patti’s, our favorite Greek restaurant, we conveyed the news to Phil and Conrad, two of our close friends. Calvin and I had agreed on our party line when asked the inevitable question, “Why?” Our sad and dignified reply was to be, “We simply grew apart.”
We were not, however, prepared for other first questions, the most crass among them, “How are you dividing the art?” To which I replied without missing a beat, “With a chain saw, down the middle.”
We found ourselves befuddled and disappointed that none of our “best” coupled friends offered up the question which would have been so appreciated: “Gosh, we’re so sorry. How are you doing with all this?”
T he saddest part of my naïveté was the fact that it had never occurred to me that the relationship with Calvin would not be, poetically, ’til death do us part. I was thirty-four and, once again, alone.
One wonderful thing that came out of our parting was the renewal of a previous and meaningful friendship. My initial relationship with Carlo Richards and Fannie Dalbert, through no fault of theirs, became a casualty of my time with Calvin. Carlo was an industrial designer with a keen sense of personal style. He and Fannie had married six years prior to my meeting Calvin. At the time, Fannie was a children’s author with her first publication deal in progress.
Calvin, my then-partner, was an emergency medicine physician who had nothing in common with Carlo and Fannie. He didn’t like them, and they were even less impressed with him. Over the years, I worked to bring them closer.
“Can we just accept that he finds us, I don’t know, not worthy of living?” Fannie blurted out with a laugh after the third of Calvin’s last-minute dinner cancellations. “Look, Drew, we love you and all, but we hate Calvin.”
“I don’t know,” said Carlo, deadpanning. “Hate’s pretty strong.”
“We hate him.” Fannie was resolute. And so we resigned ourselves to getting together “real soon” several times a year. Soon, “real soon” became almost never.
As my relationship with Calvin came to an end, I moved out during the coldest Chicago January on record. I bought and remodeled an Edwardian row house near the university, and began to rebuild my social life. My first call was to Fannie. She and Carlo arrived with champagne and a mezuzah. “I don’t care if you’re Episcopalian,” Fannie said, searching my kitchen drawer for a hammer. “You’re our friend and your new house deserves all the help it can get.”
Soon, we were making plans for the year ahead: the symphony, a river rafting trip, hikes along the Bloomingdale Trail, birthday celebrations, and, of course, the holidays.
Over dinner in my newly refurbished dining room, Carlo, Fannie, and I caught up. “You haven’t touched your wine,” I noted.
Fannie smiled brightly. “I’m off wine for now. In fact, I’m off all alcohol. Turns out those bastards at Hope Memorial won’t let you have any fun while you’re on chemo.” Reading my look of disbelief, Fannie held up a hand to stop me. “Yes, I have breast cancer, and no, we didn’t tell you earlier. And yes, we want you to know now because we’re back in each other’s lives. Any questions?”
“A few,” I replied in a concerned and confused voice.
“Well, we have all night,” volunteered Carlo. “Now, where’s that cheesecake you promised?” Carlo covered Fannie’s hand with his own. “Last I checked, Fannie can have all the cheesecake she wants.”
In our time apart, Fannie had had a radical mastectomy and two rounds of chemo, all with promising results. She was currently sporting a stylish wig she affectionately called “the badger.” She held up the edge to show the beginning of soft grey curls. “It’s coming in grey; can you believe it! I’m going grey!” In light of all Fannie had been through, Carlo found her concern for going grey too funny, and I joined him in confirmation of Fannie’s never-ebbing sense of humor.
It was a marvelous spring.
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